


Quirk

by Flightless_Wings



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Iron Man 3, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Ex Girlfriend, F/F, Family Issues, Genetic Engineering, Genetically Engineered Beings, Hacker, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lesbian Character, Love Confessions, Minor Clint Barton/Laura Barton, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Original Character(s), Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, SHIELD, Superpowers, Tags Are Hard, Torture, exgirlfriend, hacktivist, like me, mc is suuuuper gay for Natasha, wlw, wlw black widow, wlw natasha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-06-30 18:07:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 45,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15756990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flightless_Wings/pseuds/Flightless_Wings
Summary: Roen may have looked like the normal New Yorker with a desk job and a tiny apartment, but her mind was far from normal. Keeping her special powers a secret had been her biggest challenge in life but she was an expert at keeping others at a distance by now. Once her secret fell into the wrong hands though, she had no choice but to trust complete strangers and hope that she was enough to stop something truly terrible from happening. Can they save the people like Roen in time or will they be lost to their own demons?





	1. Hi, I'm Quirk

**Author's Note:**

> At the time I'm posting this, there aren't very graphic descriptions, but if there are I will let you know ahead of time.

The smell of coffee greeted me as I entered my favorite cafe. Since I’d grown up in a small town with a Starbucks as the closest thing to a real cafe, finding this gem right down the road from my apartment had been both a blessing and a curse. The people watching and coffee was amazing, but a drain on my wallet. At least they had free WiFi. And it was on my way to work which really helped with not needing a car in the city.

The very pretty barista--Natalie according to her name tag--was working again today. I went over my order in my head even though it’s always the same thing.

“Hi,” she said with a smile as I reached the front of the line. “Roen, right?”

“Uh- yeah. That’s me, you remembered.”  _ Very intelligent conversation _ .

“You’re here quite a bit. Iced mocha still?”

“With an extra pump and whipped cream please.”

She nodded. “And a scone?”

“You get me.” I smiled and handed over my card.

She handed the pastry over with my card and I moved down the counter to wait for my coffee. My usual spot by the window was taken so my eyes swept the room for another small table, landing on a  booth with an outlet close by. I wasn’t sure what I’d find on it today, but usually the sunlight helped me reorient myself afterwards.

Another barista called my name and I took my spoils to the booth facing the window that took up most of the front wall. I’d just taken my laptop from my bag and set it on the table when there was an impossibly loud crash as the window caved in. I froze in shock--which was not an evolutionary marvel on my behalf, how had my ancestors made it to me?--as glass rained into the cafe. A team of people climbed into the cafe as everyone dove for cover or retreated down the street; all except for me and one other person.

From behind the counted, Natalie launched herself at the attackers. With impossibly quick movements, she kept a majority of the enemies at bay. My survival instincts finally caught up to the situation as I realized those not being taken out by my favorite barista were checking under tables, looking for something in particular. Or someone. As I hid in my booth, I realized they were here for me.

A little over two weeks ago, I’d come across some valuable information about some overseas interference in government affairs, specifically the election happening next year. As a part time newbie hacktivist, I didn’t love the government. Still, I believe in power of the people so a fair election was actually in line with my beliefs. I couldn’t let it slide so I sent the information ahead to S.H.I.E.L.D. and let them handle it. They asked who I was and how I’d gotten it all or gotten it to them but I left it anonymous and covered my tracks. I figured that would be the end of it, I’d done more than my part. How could these people have found me, my infiltration was flawless as always! More importantly right now though, these people didn’t need to suffer for a mistake I might have made.

“Hey!” I shouted, pulling myself out of hiding. I got to my feet and grabbed my laptop. “If you want these plans, you’ll need to catch me!”

I’d deleted any trace of what I’d found after sending it off to S.H.I.E.L.D. but clearly they didn’t know that. Natalie called out to me but I’d already turned and started running. Gunshots popped off behind me as I escaped through the back delivery door. I had no idea where to go but down the alley rather than towards the street. As I ran I looked around for a hiding place to pop out at me. Then a gunshot struck the dumpster next to me and a rough voice commanded me to stop. I came to a jerky stop, clutching my laptop to my chest like it would be enough to stop a bullet.

“You’re the one we’re looking for?” the guy behind me asked as I slowly turned around to face him. “Well. Not what I had in mind.”

“I get that a lot,” I muttered. “More people should suspect the girl with glasses.”

“I’m going to need you to come with me.”

Suddenly, his face went slack and he fell to the ground, his gun skittering away from him. Natalie stood behind him, not taking a moment to check on him before turning her attention to me. “You  _ ran _ ?”

“How did you do all that?” I asked, finally loosening my grip on my computer.

“You’re Quirk aren’t you?”

“How do you know about that?”

She shook her head. “We need to stop answering questions with more questions. My name isn’t Natalie, I’m--”

“You’re the Black Widow aren’t you?” I finished. “Natasha Romanoff, Natalia Romanova. I may have peeked into your file, but there was no picture with it.”

“You can call me Natasha. We need to get somewhere more private. Come with me.”

Seeing as how my two options at this point were 1) go with the pretty assassin who seemed capable of protecting me or 2) make her angry by refusing, I followed her back towards the street.

“What about my stuff?” I asked as we passed the cafe’s back door.

“Worry about that later. I’m more worried about keeping you alive. Someone can bring it later.”

I decided that I’d asked enough questions for the moment and just decided to fall in next to her as we crossed the street and headed to a sleek black vehicle. She gestured for me to get in so I did as she asked, wondering how she’d kept a low profile as a barista with such a flashy car.

“So where are we going? Am I going to get arrested?”

Natalie--Natasha sort of smiled. “Not just yet. You seem to be pretty good at covering your tracks. I’m taking you to the only person who found a way to hack you back. Do you want to tell me how you got your hands on all that information?”

“Wait a second, how did they find me? Or you guys?”

“That’s a bit of a long story.” She admitted, pulling out into the street, heading towards Manhattan. “You tell me your story and I’ll tell you ours.”

“Deal.” I agreed. So I told her part of my story; the mitigated version staring when I was at my community college. I met some hacktivists who opened my eyes to what I could be doing with my talents. “Then I moved here. Tried out the hacktivist thing on my own. Just the small stuff for the past few years, this was a complete accident.”

“I’m thinking more of a trap.”

That derailed my story. “A trap?”

“I can explain more when we meet up with the others.”

“You’re taking me to S.H.I.E.L.D. right? Who do you guys have that could back hack me?”

“Well, sort of. I’m sure you can think of at least one super egotistical yet maddeningly intelligent billionaire I could be taking you to talk to.” Natasha replied.

“Tony Stark?”

“Bingo.”

“Holy shit, do I get to meet the Avengers?”

“Some of them, Thor of course isn’t around.”

I nodded. “Makes sense. Asgard and all that godly stuff.”

“And Bruce doesn’t like the city.”

I’d seen plenty of Bruce Banner on the news and in files to know that was probably for the best. “Understandable. Anyways, I sent it to you guys and I thought I’d completely covered my tracks. No one ever finds me.”

Natasha thought about that for a moment. “I’m not a computer expert like you, but maybe they hacked us instead of you.”

“You think so?”

“I’m not sure, but if you can fly so far under the radar we couldn’t find you until recently, it might be the only explanation left.”

After a long drive full of questions, and semi-awkward silences, we arrived at the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. To the untrained eye--of which I had two--it looked like a normal building. Natasha pulled into a spot clearly marked red, but I decided not to point it out. We made our way inside, Natasha flashing an ID badge to the pleasant looking man at the lobby counter. I couldn’t tell if the people milling around the lobby were actually normal people or agents as part of their cover and again decided not to say anything.

“Don’t let anyone intimidate you.” Natasha said as we stepped into an elevator.

“Intimidate me?” I shifted my computer around in my arms as my hands suddenly started to sweat. “Why would government agents intimidate me?”

She sort of smiled as the elevator rose. “We’re not exactly government. We don’t find hackers to arrest them, no one called us in for that.”

“Right, just the ones of us that catch Tony Stark’s eye.”

“Not many people do that,” she admitted. “But you’re not a regular hacker are you, Roen?”

I felt my face blush as I looked away from her. “None of us are very normal,” I muttered.

The elevator doors slid open to a new hallway, one much less crowded than the lobby down stairs. “Tony is a bit odd,” Natasha mentioned as we walked toward a set of double doors.

I nodded. “So I hear. Billionaire, playboy, part time superhero. If that is all wrapped up in one person they have to be a bit odd to make it all work.”

“And Director Fury may seem terrifying, but trust me he won’t actually hurt you.”

“Sounds awesome.”

She placed her hand on the door but turned to me before opening it. “Ready?”

“As ever I suppose.” I could hear voices just on the other side of the door and I was staring to realize where I was. “This is not where I thought my day was going when I woke up.”

Natasha gave me a small smile. “You can do this.”

The door opened and we made our way inside while the few men sitting around a table turned to look at us. Everyone seemed to notice Natasha Romanoff first, before their eyes fell sideways to me and rested like they weren’t sure why I was there.

“Who’s your tag along?” I knew enough about Tony Stark to recognize him in Time Square let alone in a small meeting room.

“Quirk.” Natasha said proudly.

I knew that all 5 foot 5 inches of me must have looked quite intimidating as I stood next to the world’s most deadly and attractive assassin so I decided to introduce myself. “I’m Roen.”

“You’re... Quirk?” I assumed the intimidating man with an eye patch would be Director Fury.

“Yes?”

“Terrifying,” Tony said getting up from his seat. He made his way over to me where I still had my laptop tucked in my arms and feet glued to the carpet. “You gotta show me how to do what you do. I’m still amazed, how old are you even?”

“Tony, you don’t ask a girl her age,” Natasha said, guiding me by my shoulders to a chair. “Roen, we’d like to go over what we know to see if you can give us any information we might have missed.”

I nodded and set my computer down on the table. “Like I mentioned before, this was a complete accident. Sometimes I get carried away. I figured I would go looking for a scandal like I do when nothing immediately comes to mind. Usually I just find banking or marketing scams and return money to the right people. Then I found a weird transfer of money from a few Congress members into a collective account. When I found out it was from an organization in Russia I thought that was really weird. So I dug a little more and ran into a bit of a wall and after getting through it, I found a weird sort of organized list of people. It took a bit but I got it down to a group of five people who seemed to lead the whole thing. They had all signed up for other account names under the names Hanes, Yates, Demaio, Ramirez, and Aguilar. H, Y, D, R, A. Of course I saw that and I thought it was weird but not definitive, it could have been a coincidence. Then I found that symbol encrypted on nearly everything under those names. I got scared after that and I sent all of it to you and I deleted it from my computer, even completely wiping the hard drive.”

Fury stared at the ground for a moment longer than I thought necessary but finally looked back up to me. “We couldn’t find a single trace of you after you sent that email.”

“Yeah, I uh- I wasn’t sure going to the government was a great idea but I figured you were the best people to handle it.

Tony shrugged. “Good work, kid.”

“Kid? I’m almost 26.”

“You’re impressive, you know that?”

I blinked. “What?”

“Should I speak up?”

“Miss Roen,” Fury interrupted, “we did a little more digging. All of that was a front, a lie.”

“A trap.” Natasha added. “Which is why we had to track you down.”

My eyes glanced at her barista name tag still reading Natalie on her work shirt below a printed steaming coffee cup. “How did you find me?”

Fury made a small noise which I figured was the closest he got to a laugh. “You would be hard pressed to find someone Natalia Romanova can’t find.”

Natasha shrugged. “I am invisible far more often than not. I know how to disappear so I know how to find someone. Quirk was all we had to go off of other than that you were a hacker, but we found you.”

I suppose that meet-cute I’d daydreamed about me and the cute barista was off the table for sure now. “So what were they covering up?”

“A ring of genetically engineered humans.”

My heart dropped. “What do you mean?”

“They were using Hydra as a cover. This is an organization who’s been implanting genetically engineered DNA implanted into fetuses across the world.”

“Genetically engineered like... Like Captain America?”

“Less flashy,” Tony said almost dismissively. “He’s not all that by the way, but these people would be less extraordinary. Still amazing I’m sure, and probably dangerous, but not in the same super-soldier-perfect-fighter sort of way.”

“Another agent may be tracking down one of these people in Bosnia now who’s been amplifying electricity in erratic ways. They've been blowing power grids in entire cities.” Fury added, standing from his chair and pacing at the head of the table.

I decided it was best not to say anything. I wasn’t sure my voice wouldn’t betray me or that I wouldn’t outright surrender myself.

“Do you have anywhere to go?” Natasha asked me suddenly.

That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until now. If they knew the cafe I went to on my way to work, they knew where I lived. If they knew that, they could probably find my sisters as well.

“My family could be in danger.” I said suddenly. “My mom, my sisters, my dad and his family, I put them all in danger by even  _ looking  _ at all that!”

Fury quickly tried to reassure me. “We can have agents posted at their homes as well, follow them if we need to. Roen, we may not be able to catch these people without you. We need your help.”


	2. Over My Head

I’d seen the Stark tower plenty of times before but never this close and I’d never been inside. Natasha drove in like it was nothing, parking in the garage next to at least a half dozen beautiful cars lined up in neat rows. She made sure this car was just out of line enough to notice. I knew I liked her.

“You’re telling me I get to stay here. In Stark Tower. Like it’s a hotel.” I said as we got out of the car.

Natasha nodded. “Tony offered. And it’s close and safe.” 

“Didn’t Loki completely infiltrate this tower and open a wormhole to an alien army?”

“Might not want to bring that up around him,” she warned. 

“Noted. What exactly am I supposed to do here? I have my laptop and that’s literally it, not even the charger for it. Am I supposed to have breakfast in the morning with Pepper and Tony?”

My companion smiled as she flashed a badge to a member of security who nodded back to her. “Tony doesn’t eat breakfast, so you’re good there. You’ll be left to yourself in the mornings. But after that, we have plenty to do.”

“I deleted everything I had.”

“We kept ours. And I think you could benefit from a little bit of self defense training. Running away could have gotten you killed.”

I had a brief image of Natasha with her hair tied up and boxing gloves on ready to beat me to a pulp as we got into an elevator. “I will warn you now, I am about as fragile as the glasses on my face.”

“We’ll fix that.” Natasha smiled. 

I found that each time she smiled I temporarily forgot that if she wanted to, she could kill me with her bare hands. I’m not sure that was intentional, but it made me question every move she made and what her intentions may really be with keeping me in Stark Tower where Tony could easily keep an eye on me. I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought I may turn against them so that meant that not only did I have to watch all of them closely but also my own actions as well. If they found out about how I really found all that information, things could go downhill really quickly. 

“So that other person in Bosnia. What’s up with that?”

“Another agent is checking it out. I stayed here to make sure you were really you and it seems that was definitely the right all, but it may mean he takes a bit longer over there.”

The way she spoke about this other agent, I wondered if they were together. Then I had to remind myself not to care. This was just a pretty barista anymore, this was a woman far out of my league and clearly much more experienced with the rest of the world than I was. The elevator came to a stop as we reached the right floor and a lovely blonde woman passed us on the phone, utterly oblivious as to the two of us as she was immersed in her call.

“No, no, Mr. Stark is not going out of town, I apologize if he had his schedules mixed up, we would be thrilled to attend your ball,” she said into the headset tucked around her ear.

“Jarvis, remind me to call back and cancel whatever she just signed me up for,” Tony said as he came up the hall where Pepper had just emerged. “Welcome to Hotel Stark, kid.”

I supposed I wasn’t going to be escaping the ‘kid’ nickname so I didn’t bring it up. “Thanks for letting me stay here.”

“Pepper is going to be thrilled to have someone to take her side against me more now,” Tony said with a bit of a smile. “You want to get started on this code breaking now?”

From behind us, the elevator doors slid open again to reveal an agent in a simple black suit I’d seen at least four of in the lobby of the S.H.I.E.L.D. building. “I believe this is your bag,” he said holding out my purse to me. 

“Thanks,” I said gratefully. “Hey you even kept my scone! Thanks man.”

“My pleasure. Would you like to make up a list of things to gather from your apartment? And the key perhaps?”

“Oh uh yeah let me just--” I dug around in my bag for a moment before Natasha put her hand on my shoulder. 

“Boys, if you don’t mind I’d actually like to take Roen to her room for just a moment. We’ve been beratting her all day. She needs a break.” 

Until she’d brought it up, I hadn’t really sat down to examine what had happened to me today. I was just supposed to go to the cafe, check out some bank accounts, and then head off to work. I had a simple job in an office building to keep my cover, just a desk job that paid well enough to live on my own in a tiny apartment but wasn’t ever very difficult. Instead, I was attacked in a cafe, chased down an alleyway, saved by the cute barista who was actually a trained assassin, met a superhero, and tasked with finding a bodyguard for my family for a mistake I probably made. This was way outside my comfort zone. 

Natasha headed down the hall gesturing for me to follow which I did. “You’re adjusting well to someone making an attempt on your life this morning,” she said as we left the two men behind us. 

“I don’t think it’s really set in yet. Nothing like this has ever really happened to me so I’m still processing it,” I answered. The look she gave me was question enough for me to continue. “No one knew about me being a hacker so it was almost like there was a bubble around me. Something no one would ever know about me, it was like nothing could hurt me that way, no way to trace it back to me. The ultimate form of confidentiality. Sometimes it’s like it’s not actually me who does it all.”

Natasha regarded me like she was considering each word I’d said. I realized now how ridiculous it must have sounded to an assassin who’d been  _ raised  _ to kill people. The daily struggles of a twenty five year old girl in New York must have seemed dull on even her most boring day. And yet, she looked at me like what I was saying made sense to her. 

We stopped at a plain looking room that had certainly not been a room before but now had a simple bed against one wall, a large window with blue curtains, and small desk on it’s own wall. 

“Well no one can say he’s perfect,” Natasha quipped, glancing around the room. “He has no eye for interior designer.”

I smiled a little. “It’s totally fine for a short stay. As soon as we figure out anything else you guys need, this room can go back to being whatever Tony Stark needs it to be.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment which made me nervous. I decided not to ask for fear of what she may be holding back from me. “You should take a minute. You can come back out with us when you’re ready.” 

I just nodded as Natasha retreated out the door and back down the hall. I set my bag down on the edge of the bed and fell next to it. The walls seemed so bare compared to my room in my apartment. There at least I had a few pictures pinned to the walls. From my bag I pulled out a notebook and started off my list of things for the agents to do staring with taking them down and bringing them here. I never thought having pictures of my life could be a bad thing but just a picture of my sisters could help someone find them. 

That’s when it really hit me. 

The room that felt big only moments ago suddenly felt stifling. The bright white paint washed in the blue from the curtains felt harsh and oppressive on my eyes as my head started to spin. 

I’d been shot at today. I’d been found out. Someone knew who I was, I just gave myself up to a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, I was supposed to tear apart my apartment and protect my family. If I were to grow a  _ tail  _ it still wouldn’t be the most stressful part of my day. 

“I’m in so far over my head,” I said softly, falling back on the black and white bedspread. I blinked away the tears that formed in my eyes. It may have sounded like a joke when I told Natasha I was fragile but if just the idea of today made me cry I wasn’t sure how I would get through to tomorrow. “Hackers don’t cry,” I told myself firmly, pushing my glasses to the top of my head and rubbing my eyes. 

After a few minutes of soaking up what happened, I decided that nothing was going to get done like this. They needed this list, I needed my computer charger, and S.H.I.E.L.D. needed a lead. All of that rested on me so I sat back up and finished my list. What I needed, what needed to be hidden, and who I needed protected or watched. As soon as it was finished, I took a deep breath and emerged from the room--my room. 

Back with the others, Pepper had joined the group and introduced herself to me. I could tell my being here had been a surprise to her by the looks she shared with Tony but she didn’t make me feel like I was intruding which I appreciated. 

“It’s amazing that you can do what you do,” she said with a small smile. “I’m sorry you won’t be seeing too much of me, at least one of us needs to keep an eye on the company if it’s going to keep running.”

Tony shrugged. “I gave it to you so I didn’t have to do all that.”

“You’re still going to this party in a few weeks,” Pepper insisted as she flashed him a smile. “I’ve got to get going, I hope you can handle him well enough.”

I smiled. “I’m sure we’ll be okay.”

Pepper nodded and made her way to the elevator. “Tony behave!” she called as the doors slid closed and she disappeared. 

“Wonderful woman. I probably wouldn’t be here without her,” Tony admitted. “Let’s get to work shall we?”

I nodded and handed my list over to the agent who’d brought me my bag earlier. “This is everything I could think of. Thank you so much for doing all of this.”

“My pleasure miss. Good luck here.” He took my list and disappeared through the same elevator as Pepper had used. 

“Where do we start?” Natasha asked. She’d changed out of her undercover outfit into a softer look, one that suited her better if I could believe it.

Tony raised his eyebrow as he cleared away papers and plans from the table in the middle of the room. “You’re sticking around to help, Red?”

“I’m not about to leave her alone with you, Tony Stark. We need her help, not for you to hit on her.”

I laughed at his overly offended face and moved to sit near Natasha on the couch. Tony stashed his things on another section of the couch like I did with papers on my dining room table and stood at the open end of the couch. 

“Jarvis?”

_ Yes sir? _

“Can you pull up those emails from ‘Quirk’ for me?”

In the air around us, the tower’s computer system projected dozens of files that I recognized immediately. My senses were flooded, my ears started ringing, my eyes wouldn’t focus on just one thing, my skin felt like electricity was skating along my arms, it was all suddenly too much. I distantly heard someone say my name as I got to my feet, trying to get away on legs that wouldn't support me. 

I hadn’t been prepared, I wasn’t ready for this yet. 

“Roen!” 

I couldn’t tell who called my name or if it was me who was making the lights inside grow brighter then dimmer again and again. All I knew was I needed to get away from this room and the only way I could think to do that was to get to the elevator. 

“...your eyes...” I only caught those words before I turned away.

I fell over the back of the couch, barely stopping before heading towards the elevator. I ran into something or someone but I kept pushing to get out like my body was running on autopilot and I had no way to turn it off. My hand found the button for the elevator and the doors immediately opened as I needed them to. I tumbled inside, urging them to close quickly again behind me. I leaned on the wall of the small cubicle sized elevator as I willed it to take me down. The farther I got from the floor where I’d stranded Tony and Natasha, the clearer my head became. I needed to get out into the sun, I needed to get away from Stark Tower now. 

I steadied myself on my feet and did my best not to look suspicious as I exited the elevator on the bottom floor. The man Natasha flashed a badge to looked at me intently for a moment and I just decided to nod and flash a brief smile as I passed. It seemed to work in placating him as he didn’t pursue me towards the front door. 

Hackers everywhere knew about Jarvis, the computer system that powered Tony Stark’s suit and helped him become Iron Man. Everyone also knew that Jarvis’s detection software was unlike anything else and I was living proof of that. By just engaging with Jarvis like this, I’d completely given myself up. Tony and Natasha both knew now why I was never found, why I could hack into the unhackable, why those people were after me now. 

I was one of those genetically engineered humans like that person in Bosnia. I was a living computer virus. 


	3. What I Can Do

Out on the street, I took a deep breath. The sunlight hit my skin and my face and I soaked it all up like a plant photosynthesizing. Every time this happened I wonder if my body made that little start up noise on old computers, like I was rebooting myself. I didn’t have time to think about it now though. The elevator needed time to get all the way back up to them, but Tony could be calling down to security at any minute to come find me. 

All I had with me was my phone and the twenty dollars I kept hidden in the case as I tried to blend into the crowd at the base of the famous tower. I picked a group headed away and kept my pace even to stay in the middle, hunching down a little so I wouldn’t stand out. No one around me seemed to even notice I was there, nothing out of the ordinary for a busy part of the city and hopefully perfect for getting me out of there. 

I had no idea where I could get from here with just twenty dollars, but we seemed to be coming up on a subway station so I was going to have to go with that. My phone rang with an unfamiliar number and I had a sneaking suspicion Tony or Jarvis had somehow found it. I was glad that I never kept my GPS on and hoped they wouldn’t be able to find it before I got underground where hopefully the signal could get lost. At the ticket booth, I picked a stop just outside the city so I would have some money left afterwards to figure out my next move once I got there. 

The subway seemed too empty for nearing the end of the workday. I tapped my phone against my hand while I stared down the sides for any sign of the next set of cars coming up the tracks. When they finally rounded the corner and the subway pulled up to the station, I let my shoulders fall a fraction of an inch. Escape was close, but I wasn’t quite there yet. 

I climbed into the nearest car along with most of the other people milling around the station and picked a seat as far apart from those around me as I could. As I sank into the seat, I realized I didn’t know what I was supposed to do now. Would S.H.I.E.L.D. still protect my family? Would they go after my mother? If I called her to warn her would that just help them find her faster? Was I a fugitive now? With my powers I would have no trouble getting money,  I could coax it out of any ATM but that went against every moral fiber in my body and it just wasn’t in me to be on the run. Maybe I could take a page out of Natasha’s book and disappear. I had the skills to do that too, I could find my half-sibling in Bosnia if nothing else. 

The doors of the subway car finally slid closed and I leaned my head back against the window behind me. This is  _ definitely  _ not where I thought my life was going when I woke up this morning. 

I’d ridden the subway plenty of times before, but never with the fear of government agents or Avengers waiting for me when I finally got off and back on the street. If I had just realized what Jarvis was, what I could to to guard myself, or even had a heads up as to what was going to happen, this whole mess could have been avoided. Then again, I was never going to be able to keep my secret forever. It would have happened some other time with Jarvis, or some time I wasn’t careful with my hacking, or if we had found out what was really hidden in those files. I used to wonder all the time if someday whoever made me would find me. If they kept my name on a list somewhere to come and collect me at the right time. Maybe they didn’t even keep track of my name, maybe I was just a number to them.

My spiral into madness was interrupted by the conductor’s voice coming over the speakers saying something about a momentary delay before the doors between cars opened up to reveal a bright and shiny Iron Man looking down at me disapprovingly through the mask. He put his hands up slowly like I was an animal being crowded into a corner as I pulled myself to me feet. 

“Roen, we don’t want to hurt you.” 

“Right,” I backed into the door closest to me and as my hand made contact, they slid open, lights flashing as the people around me started shouting and hurrying away from me. I’m sure I looked like some crazy genetically engineered freak to them, but I didn’t have time to worry about them right now. I knew there really wasn’t much hope for me, but I jumped out from the subway and ran back down the tunnel, hoping for some reason Tony got stuck or couldn’t squeeze through the small opening. I ran faster than I’m sure I ever had before, even more at a loss for where to go now other than just  _ away _ . 

In my haste, I’d forgotten we were still in a subway tunnel until another started coming around the bend ahead of me, bringing me to a startling halt. Like a deer in headlights, I froze. Just like in the cafe, I couldn’t move my feet like I’d used all my adrenaline in getting myself out of Stark Tower. 

A sharp, sudden tug around my waist yanked me off my feet and pulled me out of harm’s way. The next subway passed just a foot away from me and it was a moment or two before I realized I wasn’t dead. Iron Man’s arm was keeping me pressed to the wall and I decided not to fight it even after the cars had all passed us by. He scooped me up like I was just a child  and flew me to the nearest station, setting me on a bench illuminated with that terrible underground lighting. We seemed to be mostly alone and at Tony’s command, those left around us scattered. 

His mask parted and revealed his face which was less angry than I was expecting. “Are you okay?”

I blinked. “Am I okay?”

“You almost just got hit by a subway, is that a more common event in your life than mine?”

“I- I’m fine. I’m good.” I looked myself over quickly and nodded. 

“Good. Then what were you thinking?”

 

Being told by Iron Man that I was being reckless and he was glad I wasn’t dead, that Natasha was worried sick about me the whole time getting back to Stark Tower felt like I’d been stuck in some sort of movie. People didn’t get lectures from superheroes, least of all people like me who normally didn’t do a single risky thing in their life. It was a weird experience which I was becoming accustomed to today.

“You know, getting carried around like a kid is a big weird for the both of us.”

“Don’t run off like a child and maybe I won’t have to treat you like one.”

I blushed hard and decided not to interrupt his lecture again. Rather than going through the lobby again, Tony landed on a sort of helicopter pad area near the top of the tower which helped disassemble his suit as he set me back down. He was shorter now that I realized, only a few inches taller than me but I decided the one with lasers wasn’t going to want to hear that from me. “You just wait until Natasha gets back. What were you thinking?”

“That I needed to get out of here.” I turned away from him and realized just how high up we were. There would be no escaping from here. 

“I guess I can understand how you might not trust us all yet.” He admitted, falling in next to me. I glanced sideways at him and noticed his anger had subsided. “I don’t know that I would trust me yet either.”

“It’s not just you. I don’t really trust anyone.”

“You want a drink?” He asked suddenly. 

On a normal day, I wasn’t a fan of alcohol, it had played a bad part in a hard time in my life. But today wasn’t a normal day. “Absolutely.” I followed Tony inside where he poured me something I didn’t immediately recognized but that burned my throat on the way down. 

“So Jarvis...”

_ Yes sir? _

“No, no, not you Jarvis. How about you uh- power down at least in this room for a bit?”

_ Certainly sir. _

“You want to tell me what that was now?” Tony asked, leaning against the table where I’d sat down. 

“Not really, but I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”

Before he could respond--probably with a snarky comment--the elevator door opened to reveal a worried and clearly annoyed Natasha. 

“You ran away  _ again _ !” she shouted, storming towards me. I quickly realized I would rather be staring down a subway car again right now. “I just said that running off like that wasn’t a good idea! This morning wasn’t enough to convince you of that? What if they were waiting out there for you?”

“Wait till you hear what did happen.” Tony said, taking another sip of alcohol. 

I glared at him then turned back to Natasha who’d crossed her arms over her torso and looked at me like she was trying to will me into speaking. It worked. “I couldn’t be in here. Once Jarvis took over the room, I got too overwhelmed, I could barely see, I couldn’t hear anything, I just needed to get away.”

Her stance and expression softened at my words but she didn’t let her arms fall back at her sides. Tony poured her a drink and refilled mine as he sat in a chair opposite mine. “Alright time to talk. We need the whole story if we’re going to help you.”

“You guys want to help me?”

Natasha downed her drink in one go and nodded. “You clearly need it.”

“But... but I’m--”

“We let Steve Rogers on the team, Bruce Banner, when I put on the suit for the first time I had a battery in my own chest. We’re in no position to judge your abilities, whatever they might be.”

I glanced at Natasha who had slid into the seat next to me and turned her seat to stare me down better, then kept my eyes on the short glass in my hands. I hadn’t taken the second drink yet but it was tempting me. “When I was younger, my mom told me that during one of her ultrasounds a storm hit. Lightning struck the building and that’s why I could do what I do. The actual story that I got when I was in high school was much weirder.”

“What exactly can you do?” Tony asked.

I looked around the kitchen where there were a number of electronic appliances to choose from. Standing up from the table, I moved over to the closest one--a toaster--and put my hand to it. I shut my eyes and did whatever I could think of, pulling the metal where you put bread down, turning on the coils, popping it back up, anything. I opened my eyes and took my hand away to let it turn off. “I can do just about anything if it runs on electricity or a battery. When I was younger, I couldn't control when it happened but now it only works when I want it to.”

“That’s amazing,” Natasha said quietly. “That’s how you hack isn’t it?”

“I can hack into everything I’ve tried so far.”

“And Jarvis overwhelmed you?”

I nodded and made my way back towards the table, standing just behind my chair. “The story my mother told me about the storm was obviously a lie, I knew that after a little while but I never really asked until I got older. I think I was okay with not knowing because a part of me knew I wasn’t going to like what I found out. I was in my first semester of my Senior year that I found out.”

I stopped myself then, suddenly aware that I was sharing a part of my life not even my closest friends knew about me with two people who I’d only met hours ago. Natasha shifted next to me, her body language became less closed off now like she was trying to tell me I wasn’t alone in this. I appreciated the silent gesture and continued. 

“My mother was young when I was born, only 19 when she found out she was pregnant in Phoenix, Arizona where they lived together. She was in college, my dad was in college they both had jobs but they were living off the hundred dollars my great grandmother sent them every month. I know my parents were nervous of having me, I know that I’m not ready even now to have a kid. But they kept me and to get everything they needed, they were going to have to make some sacrifices. Apparently, one of them was a lapse in judgement, my mom would never really give me all the details but she said she found another doctor. It all looked legit, he never hurt her or did anything wrong to her, my dad and everyone else never got a weird vibe from him... but he was more than a doctor. 

“When I was finally born, I caused disruptions in the room with nearly anywhere they put me down. I had to be wrapped up and not allowed to touch anything, not even allowed to go home for days while they tried to figure out what was wrong with me. No one could figure it out but I was healthy and for the most part happy. So I got to go home and my parents looked everywhere for an answer. Until they found a geneticist in New York, no one could explain it. Then Doctor Sauter found it, by accident really. She found the genetic string that had been implanted in me and made me basically a human computer virus. We stayed here hoping that she could help but... it’s just a part of me now.” I looked down at my hands like I could see the same circuits from my computer running underneath my skin.

Natasha took one of my hands in hers. “We don’t always get to choose our talents, but we do get to choose what we do with them. You can make a difference here, with us by helping us to figure out where everyone else might be. They could be just as scared as you are.”

“You’re not going to hunt them down?”

Tony gestured to Natasha’s hand on my own. “I wouldn’t say we hunted you down, would you?”

I blushed at his words and looked away from both of them. “If these people really are like me, they might be dangerous, so don’t let whoever is looking into this let their guard down. At the same time, like you saw we can’t always help it. When we get surprised it can throw these... abilities into auto pilot. Once Jarvis’ antivirus protection tried to sweep me out, it was like part of me was shutting down while other parts took over. I’ve never felt anything like that before.”

“Sorry about that,” Tony said. “Who ever thought software could actually hurt someone?”

“Do your eyes do what they did earlier all the time?” Natasha asked as I sat myself back in the chair. 

I shrugged. “I don’t know what my eyes do normally. I don’t do this around people except for my immediate family, and even then I keep my eyes closed. Artificial light hurts my eyes when I do this which is why I always took the spot by the window.”

She smiled a little. “I did notice that.”

“We should get back to this email business tomorrow,” Tony decided. “Who wants a pizza?” 


	4. Time to Prove Yourself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long wait! I was at a con this weekend and it was a long few days, but totally worth it.

There was no other way. I had to fight Natasha Romanoff. I never thought my life would come to this. 

“We don’t really have to do this!” I whimpered.

“We really do.” Natasha lunged at me again and I nearly tripped over my own feet trying to dodge her fist. “You can’t keep running away like this, specifically in a close combat situation. You need to stop your attacker, keep them off of you.”

I sat myself down on the floor in our makeshift gym at Stark Tower and ran my hands through my short hair. “I understand the idea here, I do. But I’m just not built for this sort of thing.”

Natasha stood tall above me, putting her hands on her hips after brushing her hair off her face. “You can do some amazing things and you live in New York. You’re telling me you never learned how to throw a punch?”

“I was always on the smaller size, I failed at every sport in P.E. imaginable except for Dodgeball. Go ahead and guess why.”

“Bullets are harder to dodge than a ball.”

I nodded exaggeratedly and pulled myself to my feet. “What is attacking me supposed to help?” I asked. 

“Imagine you’re sitting back at that coffee shop. Did you get any warning? Any notice? No. And you froze.” 

I thought back to being glued to my booth in that coffee shop and I had to admit I needed a better plan than that next time. It seemed that most times when I needed my “superpower” to kick in, it didn’t but when Jarvis didn’t even reach out directly to attack whatever was mixed into my DNA, it clashed and forced me out. Even after 25 years of having this as a part of me, I still hadn’t learned everything about what made me so different from other people. 

“My brain goes on autopilot when I’m in very specific types of danger. Physical doesn’t seem to be one of those types.”

“That’s what I’m here for.” Natasha took up the same stance as last time and I tried to mirror it in my own body. “When you’re fighting someone, you’re going to be the smaller party more often than not. While that does mean you have some disadvantages, it comes with its own advantages as well. For example, you can can get lower to the ground, but you can’t get to the higher targets like the nose or throat right away. Headbutting is a good last option if you need it though.”

“You’re going too fast.”

She relaxed her stance and put her hands on mine to guide them up to her own body. I tried not to blush as she put one of my fists against her chest and the other to the middle of her stomach. “These are where most people go to attack. For you, taking out the knees is your best option. Bring them down to your level--” she knelt down and put my fists now hovering at her throat and at her nose “and you can attack here.”

“I’m supposed to kick people in the shin and punch them in the nose? What am I, a fifteen year old boy in high school?”

“For a beginner, yes, I want you to fight like you’re in high school.”

I shook my head and stood back up in a relaxed stance. “Terrible time in life, high school.”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t get the traditional American education as I grew up.”

“Ah, right. Sorry.”

“And you’re not going to be punching them in the face, I want you to use the heel of your hand. Push this bone back hard enough and you’ll blind your opponent in pain. Punch them in the throat and they lose their breath.  _ Then  _ you run away. Toss away their weapon or take it with but now you can get out of there.”

“Can I run away now?”

“It’s only been an hour, Roen.”

“That’s an hour longer than I normally fight assassins, Natasha.”

She took a second to think as if remembering I were just a normal person and not a soldier. Well, mostly normal. “Good point. Do you know anything about self-defense to build off of? We can start smaller.”

“I tried punching someone once and learned not to tuck my thumb inside my fist.”

She tried to stifle a laugh. “Please tell me you were younger than ten years old.”

I laughed a little. “I definitely was. I’m only mostly helpless. I also know that you’re supposed to put your whole body into a punch to make it count.”

“Mr. Miyagi taught you that much?”

I shrugged and put myself back into the stance she’d made earlier. “You learn what you can where you can.”

Natasha took up her own stance and this time I was the first to lunge. She moved away easily, but she seemed to approve. We continued going for a bit longer, earning me a few bruises before Tony showed up.

“Holding your own, Roen?”

“Not even slightly.” I rolled up off the floor where I’d just landed and rested my elbows on my knees. “Did you just wake up?”

Tony waved his hand dismissively. “No time for idle chatter, we have work to do. I worked on Jarvis’ antivirus software last night so I can disable it easier and we won’t have a repeat of yesterday.”

“I appreciate that.”

Natasha wrapped her hands around my wrists as I put mine around hers and she pulled me to my feet. “Showers then work.”

Tony made a face and Natasha gave him and look that melted it away. “I’ll wait for you two out there then,” he said as he headed out of the room.

“You think we can find other people like me?” I asked quietly as we both headed towards the door. 

Any time I’d brought up this topic, I noticed an odd change in her. When I asked, it was like she simultaneously put up steel walls and put on a sympathetic face. A part of me wondered just how much of her reactions and time with people was real or if all of it was all a cover for her true feelings. I also wondered if I had that same look when people talked to me. 

“I hope we can.”

I let it go like I always had before, if there was something she’d decided to shield me from it was probably because I didn’t want to know. 

  
  


Working with Tony and Natasha was an experience unlike any other I’d ever had. He was scattered but brilliant and marvelled at my abilities, guiding me along almost like he could see what I saw while Natasha asked every question she could, actually caring about the answers I gave like what I was doing really mattered. It was nice to have someone in on my secret, someone who wanted to know and who cared about what it was like on my end of it. My life was a book of secrets, ones I could never fully share with anyone but having this time to freely express this part of my life was just how I’d always wanted it to be. 

“Aram. Aram Derian. There’s a boy in Armenia named Aram. It says he should be about 23 now but they lost track of him like they did with me.” I said, blinking my eyes and taking my hand off of the computer in the wall. “Thank you for letting me take over, Jarvis.”

_ A pleasure working with you, miss. _

“It’s amazing that you can see and do all this.” Natasha said quietly, as if to herself. Louder now, she turned to me. “So Aram. Is there any way you could find him?” 

“It says he was born in the capital, Yerevan, but his family wasn’t from there. They had to pull their doctor out like they did in Phoenix and they lost track of him. It doesn’t even say how his ability manifests in him.” I stared up at the only picture of him these people had, a blurry image of a new born baby that was sort of like my own brother in a weird, twisted way. “Can we go find him?”

Tony and Natasha shared a look that didn’t exactly comfort me just as the elevator doors opened up. A tall, blonde man strode into the room that I recognized even without his star spangled suit. He flashed me a bright smile that made me smile back. 

“I suppose you’re the one everyone’s been talking about?” he asked as he stuck out his hand to me. “Steve Rogers.”

“Roen. I’m Quirk, the one who sort of started all this.”

“You’re back!” Tony said, moving up to shake Steve’s hand too. “Back for the action as usual.”

_ Welcome back, Captain, _ Jarvis’ voice called from above us.

“Hey there, Jarvis. Who’s this?” Steve asked, gesturing to the image above us.

“This is someone like me.” There were plenty of files, most of which seemed to be trap doors and false exits. Aram’s file was the first one I came across with anything real.

He looked me over like I was about to start radiating light then back up at the image and what else I had displayed with Jarvis’ help. “I first heard this was a Hydra case. When I heard it was just a front I’ll admit I was a bit relieved. Now I’m wondering if that was actually true.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He crossed his arms over his chest and looked sideways at me. “I mean it looks like someone was trying to crack a code that Hydra couldn’t get their hands on. I’ve been doing my own research since I’m a bit out of my element after being...  _ out  _ for a bit. Hydra tried to crack the super soldier serum--”

Tony shook his head. “They can’t, my father made sure of that.”

“That doesn’t mean they didn’t try.” Natasha pointed out. “Steve, you think Roen and everyone else are their trial runs to make a super soldier?”

He nodded. “I think someone had the answer, or damn close, and whoever this is only got part of it.”

“I am definitely nowhere near-” I used my hands to gesture to the tall man made of muscle next to me “-your level.”

Tony rested his hand on his chin like he was trying to stop himself from his own thought process. “Maybe they’re not trying to make just one then.”

Natasha seemed to agree with that line of thinking. “Like an army.”

“Why have one perfect one who could disobey you when you could have hundreds you could train.”

I realized then what they’d been putting together as I worked though the files. These people were making their own super army, changing different genes, going by different countries to cover their tracks and keeping track of us all as closely as they could to come back once we were born to grab us. Aram and I were just two who got away. 

“I could have been raised by these people.”

Natasha’s eyes looked sadly at me as I realized what I was just imagining had really happened to her as a child. “But you weren’t. And now you’re here with us. So let’s go find Aram and make him a part of the team too.”

I nodded. “I’ll look into it more.”

“Oh Steve, you’re in for quite the treat.” Natasha said, settling back in on the couch.

I had my eyes closed like normal, but I could hear Natasha giggle and Tony stifle his laugh as Steve marvelled at how Jarvis and I worked together to dig through files. With a little more looking I found out the exact town where he lived, a short drive from the capital city. As soon as we’d pulled up a map to display, I took my hand away again and opened my eyes to see that Natasha and Tony’s body language had tensed. 

“What did I do?”

“That was amazing, Roen.” Steve said, still looking at me like I’d just invented computers.

“You tracked him down, kid, good job,” Tony said, trying to cover up his emotions. 

“Then why did you look like that?”

“Because that means it’s time to either follow the actual mission and make you hate us, or to change it up and make the higher ups hate us,” Natasha answered, getting up off the couch. “Roen... you have a skill we know, now better than we had originally thought. But this boy we know absolutely nothing about.”

I backed away from the group, bumping into the wall like her words had been a gun pointed at me. “You’re going to just kill him then? What was all that talk the other day then, Tony?”

“Wait, wait, it’s not what you think--”

Steve, clearly confused, tried to calm down both sides of the argument. “We can talk this out, don’t do anything rash! “

“If my power had been anything else, you were going to kill me too?” I demanded.

“No!” She shook her head desperately. “Roen, we were never going to kill you and we’re not going to kill him!” 

I held my tongue, aware that if I said the wrong thing I was up against three superheros who I had no chance against. I then realized that they were  _ superheros _ . My whole life I’d been so afraid that if anyone had ever found out about me or my powers, I would be torn apart at the seams to see if my veins ran like a circuit board or killed on sight. It was hard to trust anyone, even if they had plenty of reason not to hurt me. 

“What is your mission then?” I finally asked.

“To find and collect.” Tony said sullenly. “People above us, above Fury, think that people like you would be a threat to society.”

“Didn’t they think that about you?” I asked. “Any of you?” 

Natasha nodded. “Until we proved our worth.”

“People shouldn’t have to prove they have the right to live,” I countered. So many pieces of my life could have been summed up in that one quote. 

“That’s why Tony and I have been talking about the right way to do this. The two of us think that as long as we can connect to them--and I think Fury is helping the agents in Bosnia as well--then we can let them live out their lives just as they are. Like we were hoping we could do for you.” 

I decided to take a chance and believe them. If I spent my whole life running, I’d never find a place to stand on my own feet. And in the event that this went badly, Aram could be a perfect ally. “What do we do?”

“Kid, you’re not coming.” Tony said flatly. 

“Like hell I’m not. You think  _ I _ reacted badly to showing you my powers? I live here. I’ve seen you save New York, the whole world practically, right outside my window. He doesn’t know any of that. All he knows is his own life. Natasha had time to introduce herself into mine, we don’t have the time for that. If they came for me, they’re going for everyone else. You need me.”

Steve shrugged. “She sounds like she’s got a pretty good point there.”

“Who invited you?” Tony demanded. 

“They’re all pieces of a super soldier, who else should you send?”

Natasha smiled a little. “The plan including Steve is the one we’re going with then.”

“Fantastic,” Tony muttered sarcastically. “Roadtrip it is. Pepper is going to be so mad at me.”


	5. The Hardest Part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I will put a small spoiler now, there is an off the page death. It's sad for the sake of showing Roen's reality but it isn't graphic. Just a little warning.

My feet crunched over fallen leaves as I lead the others to the edge of the small town we’d arrived in. Steve stayed behind to find out what he could about what the townspeople knew about Aram’s abilities and birth story but I needed to be here. The small house in front of me was charred and overgrown. But what I wanted was behind it. As I made my way around, Tony and Natasha behind me stayed quiet.

Then I found it, half buried in the dirt and just sticking out of the bramble of weeds. 

“This isn’t fair,” I said with angry tears in my eyes. 

Natasha stepped up next to me, letting our shoulders brush together but not reaching out, waiting for me to decide if I needed it. “No, it isn’t.”

I glared down at the tombstone in front of me, angry beyond belief that he’d died so young. Only three years old before an “accident” happened, one that and given us looks of terror just at bringing up his name. This stone sat outside the city, not in a cemetery and clearly not well kept up. 

“It’s not his fault. He was just a toddler.” My voice hitched in my throat thinking about how small this gravesite must have been.

“That much power in a toddler...” Tony’s sentence faded into the wind as I knelt and pulled weeds away from the base of the headstone. 

“I am so sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to live without this. I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to live at all. I’m sorry I never got to meet you. I’m so sorry.”

Footprints behind us alerted us to someone’s arrival. Steve’s voice said something quietly to Tony who stood a few feet behind Natasha and me. I didn’t try hard enough to figure out what he was telling him. I wiped my eyes, pushing my glasses to the top of my head. The four of us had come here expecting to find a young man, only a few years younger than me and instead we found the remains of what I imagined was a lovely little home, and a headstone that was too small and too innocent. He should have be hiding his powers like me, or maybe he’d made a job out of them if they were helpful and could make his or other lives easier. I never expected this.

“Roen.” Natasha’s voice was soft like she wasn’t sure if speaking too loud would break me. “Roen, we should go.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice to work but I couldn’t bring myself to stand. Not until she knelt next to me and placed something small on the ground. It was a small bundle of flowers I recognized from around the house; I hadn’t noticed when she left but I was glad we had a chance to leave something at the site, something that showed that someone out there still cared about him. He wasn’t completely forgotten.

“Thank you,” I finally whispered.

She stood and pulled me to my feet. As we headed back to the plane, none of us said a word. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do more: find everyone else like me to save who I could or find the people who did this to us and stop them forever. The latter option sort of scared me so I decided that it was back to Stark Tower to do more digging. Jarvis and I were going to be putting in a lot of hours together.  

We didn’t stop to talk to anyone else and the townspeople seemed content to avoid us as well. I wanted to lash out at them for not doing something, for not helping or stopping the supposed doctor who’d done this to him. A part of me then wondered if the man who’d done this to me had run away and come here. When I first found out I’d always imagined it was one crazy doctor, one person in the whole world who’d try to do something like this to a baby. Now that I was looking at this again knowing there were more people like me, it meant there were either more like that doctor or he’d never really gone away. It was a haunting thought either way. 

“What did you find out, Steve?” I asked after the plane had gotten into the sky. We had plenty of time before we got back to New York but I suddenly needed to know how Aram died. 

“Are you sure you want to know?” Steve’s voice matched the one Natasha had used. 

A tear rolled down my face but I nodded anyways. 

“He... could make fires. The one time he was left alone, he set a fire in his room. Only his mother survived, but she... didn’t make it much longer than that. Apparently most of the town shunned them, called him a devil’s child” 

“He deserved better.” 

“Of course he did. You all did,” Tony agreed.

“I want to find everyone else. They came after me since I was off their grid. We have to save anyone else who’s still... and who isn’t with them.”

“We will,” Natasha promised. “I have to talk to Fury when we get back, this may help change some people’s minds if we can turn this into a rescue mission.” 

The three of them discussed tactics and threw around names I didn’t recognize for most of the plane ride back to New York but I didn’t pay much attention. I kept my hands tucked in my pockets or wrapped up so I didn’t risk accidentally messing with the plane. In my current emotional state, I knew better than to touch anything electronic. Instead, I focused on Aram and finding anyone else who may have been killed by or because of their powers. I could have easily been the one assigned to that genetic alteration, I could have set my own house on fire and killed my family. I simultaneously hated that I had been given this power but also felt grateful that I had the chance to help save those who were left. 

By the time we’d made it back, I’d come up with a new way to search through the files now that we knew that whoever had done this to us didn’t know how many of us were still around. That at least put us on more equal ground, whatever files had the most information would be the people they’d kept tabs on and everyone else they’d be going after now. That’s where we needed to go. 

Jarvis and I immediately got back into the files when we returned to Stark Tower. While we’d only spent a few hours in Armenia, we didn’t make it back to New York until early the next morning. I’d only been staying in the tower for about a week now but I felt like I knew it as well as my own, much smaller apartment. I set my bag down next to the couch and walked over to Jarvis before Natasha stopped me.

“Roen, you should get some rest.” 

I shook my head. “I need to find them. I need to help them, I can’t find another gravestone again.”

She pulled my hand from the wall and turned my body to face hers. “Do you think your powers function well under pressure? Or when you’re sleep deprived? Or emotional? If you want to find them, you need to rest your mind as well as your body to be able to find them.” 

Her voice was gentle and soothing, like she was trying to lull me to sleep. I realized that we were the only two in the room and that was probably exactly what she was trying to do. It was like she knew me better than I knew myself. Then again, she had been through her own share of troubles and come out of it alive, a hero even. Maybe she had a point. 

“Okay. But as soon as I wake up--”

“We’ll come back to this, but don’t forget I still need to train you. The next time we leave it may not be to a small Armenian town. When you need a break, you and I can go punch something, deal?”

I nodded, feeling exhaustion creep into my bones as I trudged back to the couch and picked up my discarded bag.

_ Goodnight, ladies, _ Jarvis said quietly as we left the room. 

“Good night Jarvis. I hope you’re ready for tomorrow.”

  
  


We went nearly a week without finding anything else worthwhile. Natasha explained everything to Fury and the two of them combined forces to fight the higher ups of which I still knew so little. That was okay though, I had enough to deal with on my own. 

The first time I slept in past 9 since arriving at Stark Tower, Tony came looking for me. Apparently I had given them all the idea I was a morning person when really it was three alarms that got me up in the morning. The past few late nights of only getting a few hours of sleep had finally caught up to me and I’d slept through all of my alarms, prompting Jarvis to ask Tony if I needed to get up. I tried not to think of that as creepy, he was a part of the building, of course he knew when I was awake. 

I woke up a little after two weeks of being found out as Quirk to a soft tap on the door to my room. “Hey kid?” Tony called through the door. 

“Yeah?” I croaked, grabbing my phone and glasses. 9:22? How had that woken me up but not my alarms? Come on brain.

“Oh good you’re still alive.”

“I didn’t mean to sleep in so late,” I muttered as I opened the door. 

He smiled a little. “The all mighty Quirk gets bedhead, does she?” 

“You’re a guy, you know how short hair can be in the morning,” I grumbled, flattening the back of my hair with my hands. 

“Only brought the essentials huh? You know... you may be here for a bit,” Tony said, his eye glancing around the room.

“Well I didn’t need my furniture, I won’t be needing a second bed or a couch in here. They brought me most of everything else.”

Tony glanced around the room as if seeing it again for the first time. “This is everything?” 

“For the most part. Not all of us are billionaires, Tony.”

“Your apartment must have been tiny.”

“It’s New York, I live alone, what did you expect?”

“Roen, there’s hardly anything here,” he pointed out. 

I shrugged. “It’s easier to move that way. That apartment isn’t really... home. It’s just where I go at the end of the day. And now I guess it isn’t even that anymore. But my apartment isn’t important right now. Let me get dressed and I’ll meet you back out there.”

He took one last look around the room and glanced at me sadly before nodding and turning down the hallway. “Jarvis and I will be waiting for you.”

I checked my phone again after getting dressed and found another text from my dad. Every so often he texted on a weekend that he picked up my younger sister to go do something together with his fiancee and her kids. I didn’t know them as well as I guess I should have with their wedding approaching, but having international psychopaths on my tail was pretty good at keeping away that guilt as I had to tell him no. 

“She wakes,” Natasha said as I walked into the main room. 

“She’s back,” I replied with a smile. “How was this latest meeting?” 

“We’re getting there. Fury is going to handle it from here.”

I grabbed a bowl of cereal before joining her at the table. “What’s with the distracted look?”

“My partner isn’t back yet,” Natasha answered. 

I tried not to let my face show my disappointment before I realized she wasn’t talking romantically. Selfish thought in the first place, I know but I’d been thinking about the past few days without our training time and realized I missed her. “The one in Bosnia?” 

She nodded. “Clint Barton. He was supposed to be back in the states early this morning.”

“Barton?” Tony asked. “He’s asleep down the hall.” 

“What?” Natasha demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“You never asked,” he called after her as she ran back down the hall. 

“This Clint guy. He’s Hawkeye right?” I asked. 

Tony seemed impressed. “You did your snooping didn’t you? Yes, he meant to surprise Natasha but she showed up earlier than we expected.”

I was going to ask how many rooms he had for when people just decided to stay over but decided against it. Tony was good enough to let me stay here until we found out more about who we were up against and agreed with me that they needed help and not to be hunted down, but we weren’t  _ friends _ . I sort of wanted to ask why he’d slept here the night before as I could tell from him wearing the same clothes from the night before, but again I held back. 

Natasha returned as I finished breakfast with an attractive blonde man with amazing blue eyes. “Roen, this is Clint. He’s the second best agent S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever known.”

He laughed shook his head. “Only if that makes her third. Nice to meet you, Roen.”

I shook his hand. “How was Bosnia?” 

“We found the girl and we had a chance to help her out. Agent Hill is still over there helping her out, she has this incredible connection to lightning storms that seem to follow her around. The team is doing what they can to help her out.”

“What’s her name?” 

Clint smiled a little. “Lana. She’s going to be thirteen this year.”

“Oh, she’s just a baby,” I said sadly. “Is she okay? Does she know what’s going on?”

“Sort of. Natasha explained some things to me which we passed on to her, but she ran away from home a few years ago. We found her mother and I think they’re going to try to work things out now that Lana knows more about what’s happening inside her own body.”

“I hope they can make it work.”

“They tell me you’re the one who can help us find the others,” he said, looking between me and Tony. “Show me what you can do, Quirk.”

I smiled and promised to show him what Jarvis and I could do when we worked together. He was just as amazed as each of the others had been before him. At some point during the day, Steve arrived as well and the five of us worked together to sort through what we could find. While Jarvis and I went through the files, the others went through each and every name I came across, even ones that only appeared once to compile a list that we might use later. Near the end of the day, we finally discovered another name after we followed the letters G.E.F. from one file deep into another. 

“Genetically enhanced fetuses. That’s what they call us.” I said, dropping my hand from my physical connection to Jarvis. 

I looked up to what Jarvis had projected into the middle of the room. The name this time was Niko Tanaka, but I was more interested in the picture next to it.

“She’s grown up,” Tony pointed out as all noise in the room halted. 

Natasha stood and stared intently at the picture for a moment. “It says she’d be about 24 and that picture looks as recent as... her 20th birthday at least.” 

“They found her.” I could hardly believe that a young girl who I’d expected to be so much like myself would have aligned herself with the people who had altered her genetic code without any remorse or caution for how it may affect her life. I wondered if they told her what happened to Aram or if they’d ever even cared enough to find out. I wonder if she knew there was anyone else like her out there or if they’d kept it a secret from her, there had to be some reason she’d agree to be a part of anything they offered. 

“She has black hair and dark brown eyes, she was born and raised in Okinawa, she has no brothers or sisters, she graduated with honors... She had a great life ready for her, why would she do this?” I asked, my voice sounding hollow. 

“We don’t know that she had a choice in this, Roen. We don’t know anything yet. Can you use this file to connect to where they are keeping base?”

“I-Yeah, I’ll try that.”


	6. Boy in the Trees

Using the Niko file, I finally found the master list that they kept, connected through “GEF” which they used on all of our files. I found my own next, a picture taken of me through the window of the cafe maybe days before the attack. They’d added Quirk next to my name along with the updated picture and the location of my apartment. Just as I started to get too far into each round of digging, Natasha pulled me out. Sometimes Clint joined us, but for the most part it was the two of us who sparred until my mind had cleared. I was extremely grateful to her for every time she pulled me away before I got too overwhelmed.

One night after I couldn’t sleep I went back to work with Jarvis and found Natasha and Clint asleep on the couch, still pouring over their lists even in their sleep. Clint had just said earlier that day that he noticed the toll so much digging had taken on me and even though he was supposed to head home for a few days to see his wife and kids, here he was trying to help me out. Natasha certainly picked an amazing partner. 

I made the mistake of trying to slide a laptop out from under Natasha’s arm. Before I could even blink, she was awake and sat up so fast she nearly headbutted me on her way up.

“Whoa whoa, Natasha, it’s me!” I said, putting my hands up as Clint shot up just next to us. “It’s Roen, I’m sorry.”

She blinked away her shock and quickly assessed the situation. As soon as she realized that she was okay, Clint had done the same. I quickly explained I had just been trying to move their laptops out of the way.

“Why are you even up?” Clint asked, rubbing his eyes. “It’s almost 4 in the morning.”

“I woke up, I do that sometimes. I have trouble sleeping, no big deal. I came out here to work more with Jarvis.”

_ Early start, Miss Roen? _ Jarvis’s voice called above us. 

“No,” Natasha answered for me as she stood from the couch. “Miss Roen is going back to bed.”

“Okay,  _ mother _ ,” I retorted with a small smile. 

Clint stretched back out on the couch and waved us off. “You two have fun with that. Jarvis, wake me up around noon.”

_ I’ll set an alarm, Mr. Barton. _

Natasha pushed his foot off the couch as she passed, urging me to head back towards me room. “Goodnight, Clint.”

“Night Tasha.” He murmered. “Night Roen.”

“See you... later today I guess,” I said as we headed away. “You don’t have to walk me to my room, you know. I think I can find my way.”

“Sure, but I wanted to know the real reason you’re up.”

I stopped just outside the door to my room. “What do you mean?”

She cocked one eyebrow. “You think I can’t tell when someone is lying? You’re tired, you’re not very good at it after 3 in the morning. So what was it?”

I sighed and let her into my room. Picking my phone up off the table, I unlocked it and handed it over to her, the most recent text messages displayed on the screen. She scrolled up to the top which was only to earlier this morning to a single heart emoji in the first text message at 2:48 this morning. 

“Who is this? Kelsey?” She looked up to me for the story behind what I’d shown her.

I wasn’t sure what made me want to share this with her, but as soon as she asked, I poured out my whole story. 

“Kelsey is my ex-girlfriend.” I sat on the edge of my bed, looking down at my hands like I was afraid to see her reaction if we made eye contact. “We dated before I moved here for almost six months, but we were best friends before that. We met in college, just as I was starting to realize that... that I like girls. I sort of fell in love with her and she knew it. I did my best not to be obvious and I never tried to make advances on her or anything, but I know she knew it. The friendship itself was a toxic one but I was certain that being in a relationship was what I wanted because I cared about her. But that just made it worse. She moved a month after we officially started dating to New Hampshire and... I broke up with her once our mutual friend said that she made me cry more than she made me smile. That was the only thing that made me realize what was going on. So I ended it.”

Natasha looked back over the text messages. “And she sends you a heart after 2 in the morning?”

“Apparently so.”

“And says she’s drunk.”

I nodded. “It was apparently an accident while she was showing someone else our past text messages.”

“The ones you’ve already deleted?” Natasha walked over and sat next to me on my bed. 

“It would appear so.”

“Where did you say she lived again?” 

I laughed lightly as she handed back my phone. “It’s been months. I don’t know why this is making me feel like this anymore.”

Natasha put her arm around my shoulders. “I can’t tell you why, Roen. But you do deserve better than that, your friend was right. You deserve happiness and if that doesn’t come from this girl, it will come from one someday.”

Leaning against her, I sighed. “I have such bigger problems in my life right now.”

She didn’t respond to that. Instead she started humming, a comforting sound in the base of her throat. I didn’t recognize the song and maybe it wasn’t one but it cut through the layers of stress a few text messages at 2 in the morning had piled up on me. As we sat there, I finally got the courage to do what I needed. I deleted Kelsey’s number from my phone, tossing it out of sight afterwards. 

In the time I’d spent with Natasha, I noticed how she acted with me compared to how she acted with other people. With Tony, her banter kept up with what he threw at her and she stood in a softer, more relaxed stance when next to him. With Steve she used more subtle humor and stood firmly with her feet apart. With Clint I would have believed they were brother and sister the way they seemed to predict the other’s moves. With me, all I noticed was how much I always wanted to be next to her. 

Natasha was smart and kind and understood what was going on in my head almost at the same time I did. For a while, I’d believed that was a part of what made her so effective as an assassin, she could manipulate people. I’d been trying hard to remember that every time I noticed her brush against my arm or smile when she caught me looking in her direction. Now though, I was beginning to wonder if I was trying to distance myself from her because I was scared. Maybe Kelsey was still in the back of my head or my parents divorce or my mother’s second divorce, it could have been any number of things. The point was, maybe it wasn’t just a facade to keep me on their side.

I believed that even more when I woke up the next morning with my glasses and phone neatly place on the desk near my bed, a blanket draped over me. Natasha wasn’t in the room, but I found myself still able to recall the gentle hum as if she were just behind me. A smile split my face as I got up and dressed.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” Tony sang as I entered the room to see everyone else already seated  around the table or on the couch. “I was just about to have Jarvis wake you.”

_ Miss Roen is awake now sir _ , Jarvis said.

“Thanks buddy.” 

“So where are we headed today?”

“ _ We _ ?” Steve repeated. “Roen, you’re aware that you’re not an agent or a super soldier or protected by a suit of armor, right?” 

“They’re like me, I can’t sit back and not do everything in my power to help them.” 

Natasha looked like she wanted to argue with me but she surprised me instead. “Roen may be the perfect way for us to make them realize they can trust us. Clint, it took you and Maria almost a month just to get Lana in Bosnia to trust you.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, how long did it take to get Roen to trust you? You were in that coffee shop for weeks!”

“Technically, it only took her that one morning before I went with her. I guess a day or two after that.”

Natasha beamed. “Ha, I win.”

“Alright, back to the issue at hand,” Steve corralled them. “Roen, if you go with us you’re going to have to know that we may not be the first ones there. Just because they aren’t in the files yet doesn’t mean we’re the only ones looking into them.”

I nodded. “But if I can save even one of them...” 

He looked like he understood what I meant without me having to say anything else. It looked like all of them did, there had been someone in each of their lives that they wish they had saved as well. Now that we agreed, we did exactly as we had with Aram and got as close as we could. The first name we got close enough to pursue was a young boy in Vancouver named Thomas. That’s where we went. 

  
  


Thomas ended up being another shocking case, though in a different way than Aram.  

I hadn’t expected him to still be in Vancouver, but he was surprisingly easy to find. At least his last address was, but Thomas was nowhere to be found. It looked like it had been days since anyone had set foot in the house and anywhere we asked, there was nothing anyone could give us. 

By the time we’d found him, he was being pursued by a team that could have been spearheaded by the same that attacked me, only they weren’t alone. I didn’t know what Thomas’ power was but I knew he was around 17 years old by now and the young boy we saw running through the trees as we drove North looked to be about that age. I may have been wrong, but the trees seemed to move in his wake and by the time Clint had brought the car to a full stop, he had disappeared like a perfect form of camouflage. 

“I saw him,” I promised as we all tumbled from the rental car. 

Above us, Tony soared in and landed near the car. “Why are we stopped?” 

“Thomas, I think I saw him. He was--” Before I could finish my sentence, there were gunshots off in the distance. 

My eyes grew wide as Natasha grabbed my arm like she knew I was going to run in after Thomas. “Roen, stay here.”

“Natasha, I--”

“When we find Thomas and get him out safely, you can talk to him, I promise, but for now stay here.” I didn’t have a chance to argue before she and the others ran into the forest in front of me. Being out in the open made me nervous so I climbed back into the car and looked for anything I could to arm myself or anything else. My eyes landed on the GPS. 

“Well, a first time for anything, right?” I mumbled to myself as I shut my eyes and reached for the screen in front of me. 

As normal, the darkness behind my eyes grew darker. A series of circuit like lines ran past my eyes before I could see through them and reach my mind out like another hand. Eventually I found a light in the darkness that I hoped was the satellite but before I could grab hold of it, a loud noise pulled me back to Earth. My eyes snapped open and while I tried to readjust to the sunlight, I noticed the trees visibly swaying in the distance like they were being pushed away by something huge. 

“Sorry Nat,” I said as I slid into the driver’s seat. I didn’t have the keys but that had never stopped me before. As soon as they’d started putting computer systems in newer cars, forgetting my keys wasn’t really a problem anymore. 

Putting my hand over the ignition, the engine roared to life. Usually, I kept my eyes closed to avoid getting headaches and to focus better but we didn’t have the time to deal with that right now. I put it in gear and drove into the trees, doing my best to avoid hitting anything. I followed the swaying of the trees and found myself in a clearing filled with people. Driving the car in had distracted pretty much everyone there, but when they saw it was me behind the wheel, the Avengers--my team--got the upper hand. 

The boy I thought was Thomas had found himself in the middle of the action. If what I guessed was his power was right, then he was defenseless in a clearing. He was shouting at the men dressed in black around him as my team tried their best to get closer. I slammed my foot on the gas, scaring the first wave of men to scatter in front of me. Before I’d gotten far though, one of them jumped on the hood. While these people were the ones hunting us all down, I couldn’t bring myself to hurt them, even when Aram’s small gravestone popped into my head. 

I just wanted to get to Thomas and now here I was, stranded as much as he was. At least I’d managed to get their attention on me and as they circled around, I saw my teammates fighting those left. Tony was the first to reach Thomas and without even an introduction, he lifted the boy up and pointed to me. I threw the car in reverse and spun around, trying not to seriously injure anyone but if I knocked them off their feet, I wasn’t going to be torn up about it. Tony got Thomas up into the air as I hurried back towards the road. I clamored out to meet a shaken Thomas as Tony dropped him off next to the car. The latter gave me a stern look like I was a teenager who’d just broken curfew, but he didn’t say anything before flying off again.

“Who... who are you people?” Thomas asked. “Was that...?”

“Iron Man?” I offered. “Yeah, that was him.” 

“What’s going on?” he demanded. 

I wasn’t sure where to start but I decided it was with him. “Thomas right?” He nodded. “I’m Roen. I’m like you.”

He looked skeptical at first so I showed him. Putting my hand over the ignition again, I turned off the car, then turned it back on, changed the radio station a few times, and turned it back off. 

“Whoa. I bet that comes in handy,” he said, resting his hand on the door of the car. “I failed my first driving test.”

“You can do that stuff with the trees, right?”

“Yeah. It came out of nowhere one day when I was 13.” I must have looked as shocked as I felt with the quizzical look he gave me. “Was that not what happened to you?”

I shook my head. “No, I was born with it. The moment I first touched the scale they used to weigh me on in the hospital the numbers fritzed.”

“Weird...” Thomas agreed. 

Our conversation was quickly cut off by a string of gunshots, shattering every window on the rental car as we ducked for cover. I tucked my head into my chest and covered it with my arms. Beside me, Thomas fell against my shoulder as I silently called out to someone--anyone--to come and get us. 

The shooting stopped and a body fell to the floor as Natasha called out to me. “Roen?” 

“I... I’m okay!” I called out, my hands shaking as I pulled them away from my face. “Thomas, are you--”

Against my shoulder, Thomas’ body had fallen with blood seeping into his shirt from at least two shots to the chest. Natasha rounded the corner of the car as soon as my brain caught up to my eyes. “Nat, he’s- he’s-- Thomas! Thomas!” 

Natasha pulled him to the ground and pressed her ear to his chest. “He’s breathing.” 

“Thomas!” I felt tears fall from my eyes and blur my vision. “Natasha, what do I do?” 

She grabbed my hands and placed them over the bullet wounds in his body. “Put pressure here, try to stop the bleeding.” She pressed her hand to her ear and started talking to the rest of the team through the comms. “Guys, we need an evacuation now. Thomas is down, losing blood, we need a hospital.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, looking back and forth through my bloody hands and his unconscious face. “Thomas, I am so sorry!” 


	7. And Maria Makes Six

Clint told us to go on ahead. Since I could get the car started up without the keys he’d probably lost by now, we loaded Thomas in the car with Natasha sitting with him and keeping her hands over the bullet holes in his body. We ignored most signs along the way and while honking with one hand was difficult, the three of us made it back into town. 

“Roen, I need you to focus, I saw a hospital sign on the main road we took to get into town, do you remember it?”

“How are you so calm with someone’s blood all over you?” I asked frantically

“Roen, we just need to drive, right? Just getting to the hospital,” she reminded me. “You’re doing good, he’s going to be okay.”

I nodded and kept my eyes open for another sign. “At least they have free healthcare.” 

By the time we finally made it to the hospital, I was worried Thomas had already bled out in the backseat. Natasha sent me inside to get someone to help and get me away from seeing him bleeding. While everyone was rushing around him, taking him gingerly from Natasha’s lap in the backseat, I tried to stay out of the way. 

As soon as she got out, Natasha came over to me. “Roen, they’re going to take him inside now and we’re going to be able to wait for him. But I think before that we should probably clean up a little bit.”

I looked down at my hands which had been smeared with blood and the front of my shirt that matched. “Yeah...okay, good idea.”

We grabbed a change of clothes from the back of the car and trudged inside the hospital. Once changed and ready, the two of us took up seats in the waiting room where a nurse had directed us. Natasha let the others know where we were and they met us inside, also in a new set of clothes. 

They went over what we’d missed after we left with Thomas, but ultimately the majority of them got away. They helped authorities capture some, but Clint was swearing he’d seen Niko there. If even just one of those people had been someone like me, we could have been in much worse trouble than it seemed.

“Thomas brought up something interesting. Apparently his power just appeared one day a few years ago. He was already a teenager.” I mentioned as we were all scattered in the little waiting room. “I guess they tried doing something different after a while.”

Tony looked deep in thought. “Maybe it was because of what happened with you and Aram that they changed their approach.”

“Well, that would make sense. Roen, you dropped off their radar almost immediately. And you’re probably not the only one,” Steve agreed. “They’re adapting. They could still be out there and we’d never find everyone.” 

I nodded slowly, looking down at my hands clasped in my lap. “We only know so much and if we’re always a step behind like today...”

Natasha reached over and put her hand on my knee. “We will get ahead of this thing. We just need to look at this from a new angle.”

I placed my hand over hers and nodded, looking out the closest window to the cold Canada day outside. Vancouver was beautiful, as I’d always heard, it was sad that we didn’t have a chance to enjoy it with Thomas instead of this. Someone dressed in scrubs passed by the window and something made me take notice of him. His bright blue eyes seemed to pass right past me as if I were merely a part of the background. I tore my eyes away as he walked out of view and tried to focus on Thomas again.

After what felt like an eternity later, a doctor came out of the sterilized double doors and surveyed our ragtag group. “You’re all here for the boy, Thomas?”

“Yes, is he okay?”

She looked sadly at me, but nodded. “He’s going to live but he’s slipped into a coma. I’m afraid that the amount of blood loss was extensive, but no permanent damage is predicted.”

I ran my hand through my hair nervously. “Was... was it because we took too long getting here?” 

The doctor shook her head. “No, my guess was that this was going to happen either way. This boy’s body was in shock, but it was like all of his bodily functions had been slowed down. The blood loss was a lot, but I would have expected it to be much worse in any other circumstance.”

Steve and Tony kept talking to the doctor, about how to find his parents, about certain things she may notice, and about leaving a number for him to call when he woke up. Biggest of all, they warned her about the threat to Thomas’ life.

I didn’t hear much more about the details as I fell back into my seat. Thomas was going to be okay. Thomas would survive. I knew we weren’t completely in the clear now, but it was more than I was hoping for. “He’s alive,” I breathed, turning to look at Natasha who was smiling back at me. 

“That was some nice driving, Roen.”

“We are going to have to explain that to the rental place though...” Clint reminded us. “Good work out there today.”

“Thanks. Can we, I don’t know, can we take him with us?” 

Natasha shook her head. “He’s still a minor. They’ll find his family and I’m sure Tony is explaining everything to the doctor now--”

“And we told the basic story to the police we were with earlier,” Clint interjected.

“But we will keep an eye on him. We have a hacker on our side, you can check in on him whenever you want, right?” 

“True,” I agreed with a small smile. “When are we going back to New York?” 

Tony and Steve made their way back over to us in time to answer my question. “Ready to get at it again?”

“We have to. We barely got here in time, we need to save as many as we can.” 

Steve nodded decisively. “Alright, back to the airport then.”

“What exactly are we doing about the car situation?” Clint asked.

“Tony could give us all a lift,” Natasha suggested. 

“I can make the car work,” I added.

Tony looked impressed. “That was pretty amazing. Alright, I suppose the car is going on my tab then?”

Natasha patted his shoulder with a smile. “Unless you know another billionaire who happens to be here.” 

The five of us trudged back through the hospital, to the car, through the streets, and eventually on the plane to New York. I fell asleep almost immediately as the plane got up into the sky. I didn’t remember anything after leaning back in my seat and closing my eyes. 

The next time I opened them, it was just before I needed to wake up for our return to the ground. My eyes opened slowly when I first woke and found that I’d leaned over onto Natasha’s shoulder. While that had been accidental, she hadn’t moved away and I doubt that I had subconsciously woven our fingers together. Before I had a chance to make up my mind on how to deal with that other than just turning bright red, the pilot’s voice told us all to return to our seats and buckle up. She let go of my hand and I sat up, blinking in the rest of my surroundings and hoping my blush had faded. 

Back at Stark Tower, I expected myself to launch right back into searching with Jarvis, but instead I fell in on the couch, trying to keep quiet as Pepper rounded the corner, talking a million miles a minute to Tony. As she did, an agent appeared behind her. 

“You must be Roen,” the pretty agent said, stretching out her hand for me to shake. “I’m Agent Hill, but you can call me Maria.”

“You were staying with Lana, right? Is she okay?”

“She’s in hiding. She’s safe,” Maria promised me. “She has multiple means of communicating with us if she needs any help.”

“So we saved at least two,” I said, a smile splitting my face.

“Don’t forget about yourself,” Clint reminded me. “Now then, please tell me you’re not here to steal me away from my wife again.”

Agent Hill gave him a smile. “You’re free to leave, Agent Barton, as soon as we’re done going over some things. Nat, you’re free to go too.”

“I think I’ll stay,” she said with a smile. Her eyes flashed to me for a second before returning to her fellow agent. “Is there something new?”

The air suddenly felt tense and I realized this was a level of confidentiality I hadn’t reached yet. “Ah, well, I’m going to get all my stuff unpacked.”

The others waved as I retreated down the hallway. I took my time unloading the contents of my bag so that I wouldn’t interrupt their meeting, but after a while I realized I didn’t have my laptop so I really couldn’t stall much longer. I hoped they didn’t think I was eavesdropping on them as I made my way into the main room. As soon as I rounded the corner, a picture of someone I recognized immediately flashed up in the middle of the room.

“--then Dr. Hastings is supposed to be on the guest list as well. Now, we know that he’s somehow connected and that he’ll be at this ball since he’s also in the business of donating quite a bit to research students like you, Tony,” Maria was saying.

“I saw him. In Vancouver.” I interrupted. All of their eyes turned to me and I figured I should explain. “In the parking lot. I was just staring off into space and this guy wandered past. Those eyes are exactly what I saw, but he had bit more facial hair.”

“What would he have been doing in Vancouver?”

“Same as us,” Natasha answered. “We figured all of those names Roen found were a ruse for Hydra and nothing else but what if they use real names to throw us off?”

_Hastings_. That made sense, a ruse to cover a ruse. “Hastings isn’t on the list for least common last names in the United States, there wouldn’t be much chance of us catching up to him if I hadn’t seen him.”

“Do you think he saw you?” Steve asked. 

I shook my head. “He seemed too busy to notice me. And besides, we were inside when he was outside.”

“Do we think he heard about Thomas?” Clint asked to the group.

A sudden thought hit me like a brick wall. “He could be the one. That... that could be the one who did this to me, to all of us.”

Natasha reached over the back of the couch and took one of my hands in hers. “We don’t know that for sure, but it is a possibility.”

Part of me wondered if the reason I remembered those eyes so well was because they were the first pair I ever saw. “What do I do? Can I help?”

“Yes actually,” Maria answered. “How well can you hack into something from a different computer?”

“It takes longer than normal, lots of password encryption normally but I almost always hack into things from my own computer,” I answered, not quite sure where we were going with this.

“Well then you and Nat may just have to start a new kind of training. Roen, you’re going to have to come to this ball along with us,” Maria announced. 

I had a brief flash of myself at prom pop into my mind. I hadn’t cut my hair, I’d gone with my ex girlfriend, I’d broken one of my heels before we’d even got there, and the next morning I threw up because of some bad sushi. “I don’t have the best of luck at fancy parties.”

Natasha flashed me a smile. “You’ll be with us, what could go wrong?”

“That means someone gets to be a spy for a night,” Clint teased. “I definitely want to see that. Can I bring Laura?”

Maria shrugged. “You and Steve are going with Roen and Nat. If Laura wants to come, someone has to stay behind and she’s not cleared for that.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, I’ll tell you you won’t let her dress up for the night. _Again_.”

“Your on-call babysitter is going to be there too,” Natasha reminded him, pointing to herself. “Tell Laura I’ll take her and Lila out just us girls. Roen, sound like fun?”

Before I could leap at the offer to actually go somewhere with Natasha that wasn’t Stark Tower or out of the country, Steve interrupted me. “If we’re going to be undercover, how are any of us getting in with Tony and Pepper?”

Pepper finally spoke up since I’d first walked back into the room. “I have actually already thought of that.”

All eyes turned to her in mild surprise as Tony just looked proud. “Brilliant woman.”

She smiled a little and went through the folder she put on the table. “Maria and I have been talking about this for different reasons, a lot of funds have gone missing from Doctor Hasting’s accounts that we got a hold of through the company--long story there--and I have been setting up donations to this charity ball under two other names. James Rogers and Natalia Rushmore.”

While I’d expected to see Steve’s picture for the file they'd made up for James, it was actually Clint’s. Still, the look on Natasha’s face was nothing short of glee. “Guess who doesn’t have to be the arm candy this time around!”

Pepper smiled at her like they shared an inside joke. “Tony’s name isn’t on the list either.”

He looked exaggeratedly offended. “Why not? It’s my name on the building!” 

“But my name on the CEO nametag,” Pepper reminded him. “Sorry about this Roen, we didn’t know you would be coming along, this was a longer plan in the making.”

“I’ll be okay,” I assured her. “As long as your wife doesn’t mind.”

Clint laughed a little. “She knows the job well enough by now. I won’t say she didn’t question Natasha the first few times, but Laura isn’t the jealous type.”

The red head nodded in agreement. “Laura is definitely his better half.”

“Well then I can’t wait. It sounds like fun.”


	8. Running in Heels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates will probably be more spaced out now since school is really kicking into high gear and I have a bunch of volunteer hours and work outside of that too. Bear with me here <3

“This sounds like  _ torture _ .” 

“Roen it’s just running,” Natasha said through a laugh.

“Yeah, and that in itself is torture, but now in heels? No thank you.”

She pulled out a pair of silver heels that were admittedly very pretty, just very tall with a thin heel which did not sound good for running. “What if security gets called on us?”

“I kick them off and run?”

“Imagine there’s broken glass on the floor, what then?”

I sighed. “Why is there glass on the floor?”

“Come on, Roen.”

“Alright, alright, for you, yes I will learn how to run in heels,” I conceded, sliding the heels on my feet. When I stood, I could look Natasha right in the eyes, noticing just how varied they were. Little flecks of gold and brown and even blue settled in the green there, making them seem alive all on their own. Utterly beautiful. “So umm... what’s the secret to this then?”

Natasha let us linger just a second longer before stepping away and putting on a pair of her own. “First thing is to make sure your stride isn’t too wide. You know how in movie most of the time the girl who’s running takes short quick steps? Well that’s accurate. If your steps are too far apart, there’s a greater risk you will break your heel.”

“Got it, run like the girls in movies. Is this going to be more difficult in a dress?”

She nodded. “Absolutely, but to be convincing not only that you belong with obnoxiously rich and snobby people like this doctor we’re targeting but also to talk yourself out of a situation that you might not be able to run from, both the dress and the heels are going to be important.”

“That sounds like hell.”

“It is. But, you’re not going to be alone.”

I looked down at my new glittery shoes. “Luckily I wear heels to work sometimes.”

Natasha looked me over once. “Really? Any time I saw you before work you were wearing flats or chucks.”

“Hey, don’t knock the Converse.”

She stuck her hands up in the air in surrender. “I’m not, I’m not, I promise. I was just saying that even though I know you were a secretary, you don’t seem like you wear heels much if at all.”

“I normally don’t and definitely not when I walk to work.”

“And here I was thinking I was interrupting some important training,” Tony said strolling into the room.

Pepper walked in just behind him. “Have an extra pair for him to put on? If you think it’s so easy, go ahead and try them on.”

Tony looked down at my glittery heels, Natasha’s black ones and sideways at Pepper’s stilettos. “Point taken, not easy. But we do need to steal Natasha from you for a moment, Roen.”

I sighed exaggeratedly. “I suppose I need to take off these man made death traps now, what a shame.”

Natasha pushed my arm as she walked past me. “We’re coming back to this.”

“Can’t wait.”

I slid my feet out of the shoes as the three of them retreated from the room. The last big party I’d gone to had been my prom so I really wasn’t sure what all I was getting myself into by going. What I did know was that I needed to figure out what was going on with that guy. Was he actually a doctor? Was he part of the group that attacked Thomas and knew who we were? Would I even find anything worth all of this from hacking him?

If I was going to get into this database, it couldn’t be directly from his computer because they knew at least my abilities so there were going to be intense barriers up. I could get through it I’m sure, but we had no way of know how long it would take to do that. I could also try getting in through Jarvis, but they undoubtedly had something to beat that down too. The best way was this party through a computer who had accepted donations and information from him before. I was also hoping there would be something he had on him that he would use to hook into his own computer. One of the best ways to keep someone like me out would be to be sure not all of the pieces were there and if we figured out what it was, it could end up being his downfall. 

I sat there going over as many scenarios as I could come up with until my phone buzzed on the table. The noise pulled me back to reality and I turned to see it was my mom who was calling. I pulled my sleeves down to cover my hands as I answered it, already feeling a pit in my stomach like my body was aware that something had gone wrong before my head. “Mom?”

Oh the other end of the line, my mother sounded frantic. “Roen, has your sister called you today?”

“No, no I haven’t heard from either of them in a few days,” I answered, trying to stay calm. “What happened? Is it El?”

“Her phone is here on the table but she isn’t home. Jess already left for work, she isn’t answering either.”

My mind was racing, trying to think of the most believable reason to give her that my youngest sister Eleanor was just fine. “Umm... unlock her phone, maybe one of her friends texted her or something.”

“Roen, can you help me find her?”

“I- I can’t Mom I’m not home right now, I can’t come over.”

She hesitated. “Where are you then?”

“Mom, focus,” I redirected. “What does El’s phone say?”

“Right right.” She took a few moments to get into my sister’s phone and look through her messages before speaking again. “I don’t see anything.”

“Check her social media on her computer. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, anything she has.”

“What do you mean check her messages?”

I sighed. “Okay, hold on, I’ll do it from here.”

I ran from the room and found my laptop sitting on my bed. Opening it up, I navigated to my social media pages where I knew Eleanor had an account. Just by logging into mine, I could find hers as well. I shut my eyes to dive into El’s account and found nothing on Twitter, but I did find a group message on her Facebook. 

“Mom, she’s okay,” I sighed, picking my phone back up.

“What, where is she?”

As her oldest sister, I probably should have just told my mother where she was but I also knew that there were at least two agents assigned to follow her wherever she went. She was safe and I would be lying if I’d said I had never gotten out of the house at night. 

“She’s out with friends,” I lied. “I’m sending a message to her friend May’s phone from her making it look like it’s from you so El knows not to forget her phone again.”

Since I knew my mother hated all social media, I knew she wouldn’t be hacking into El’s account to check my story but I did send her a message. It just told her that she owed me one and that she better be home by 9 or our mother would find out the truth. She’d probably left her phone behind on purpose so I couldn’t be called in to catch her. So much for that.

“Mom, you gotta calm down a little bit. You know how forgetful El is.”

I could almost see her nodding as she paced around in the kitchen like she did whenever she was both angry and relieved. “You’re right, thank you Roen.”

“Of course.”

“So where are you again if you’re not home?”

“Oh uh-- at my little cafe,” I lied again. 

“Roen Michaels, you know better than to use your powers out in public!” 

“You scared me Mom! Listen, I gotta go okay? I’m heading out.”

“Okay dear. I love you.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

As I hung up, I leaned back against the bed. When it came to other people, I was pretty good about keeping a level head in times like this. It’s only when it was my own life in danger that I froze. Truthfully, a part of me thought that someone had picked my little sister up off the street to hold her against me but as Claire’s message came in that was clearly El begging me not to say anything and promising to get home on time, I could breathe easy. 

Things with my family weren’t the easiest relationships to keep up, but then again none of the ones in my life really were. Kelsey, my parents, my sisters, my dad’s fiancee and her kids... I was just not so great about connecting with other people. Maybe that was another side effect of being a living computer virus.

“Hey, we were looking for you,” Natasha said with a light knock on the door that brought me out of my own head. 

“Oh, sorry, yeah I just had to check in on my little sister. She’s a teenager now so she’s trying to be even more rebellious than the rest of us.”

Natasha came and sat on the ground in front of me rather than usher me back to my heels. “What’s your family like?”

I was surprised by her question. I knew that the Black Widow didn’t have a family, she’d been brought up and trained as an assassin and they weren’t supposed to have ties to anyone who could distract them, but I found that I sometimes forgot that Natasha was that same person. To me, she was less intimidating and seemed to care for the people around her more than her file would have me believe. 

“Well, I have two sisters, Eleanor and Vanessa. My mom and dad are divorced, my mom’s other ex husband and El’s dad is... less than great at being a dad or a step parent. I haven’t seen him in years. My dad is getting remarried to a woman who I’ve never been able to tell my secret to and she has three kids who I barely know. It’s weird because I feel like the farther I move away from them, the more I can feel like myself but the less I know about them. I used to know Vanessa like the back of my hand, but I had to find out from my mom that she was changing her major in college.”

Natasha just nodded where appropriate and kept her eyes on me like my super lame backstory was interesting. I told her about my favorite grandfather who I just adored, my grandmother who recently passed away less than a year ago, and my extended family who I hadn’t seen since my sister had graduated high school two years ago because they didn’t approve of my various tattoos, short hair, or liberal views. If they found out I was a lesbian, they may have tried to perform an actual exorcism on me. 

“What kind of tattoos do you have?”

“Some nerdy ones. I have a Harry Potter one on my ribs, a galaxy patterned star on my hip and a pair of quotation marks on my ankles. That’s the first one I got where my great uncle said it would make people wonder “what was between my legs”.”

Natasha laughed, a deeper sound than I’d imagined but a pleasant one nonetheless that made me smile. “He said that? He sounds like a wonderful person, perhaps you could introduce me sometime. I feel like I could educate him a little bit.”

“Oh no, a woman that would actually stand up to him? He’d be terrified.” I laughed too, happy that, even if just for a second, it was like the two of us were just roommates swapping stories and gossiping about completely unimportant stuff like it was the only thing that mattered. I wanted to move in closer to her, just to be closer to her but I pulled my knees up to my chest instead. A physical wall between us. We had a job to do and at the end of it, we would just go back to our old lives; she could jump into the next mission and I would just go back to being Roen at a little coffee shop just down the road from my apartment. 

“We should get back out there. Your feet won’t just train themselves sitting here,” Natasha pointed out as she got to her feet. She extended her hands to me and I grabbed onto her wrists--the trapeze hold I think she called it, it was supposed to be a stronger hold than just grabbing each other’s hands--and let her pull me up too. 

“Sadly, no. If I could teach myself how to do things by just willing them to happen, my life would be a lot different,” I said as we returned to the room we spared in. “I may not even have these powers if I could just wish them away.” 

Natasha looked sideways at me, brushing her hair up into a ponytail. “You’d really give them up?”

I shrugged. “I’ve thought a lot about it before. My dad won’t let me tell his fiancee or her kids and he’s never said so, but I think this is a part of why he doesn’t invite me over very much. You know my sister has her own room there and I don’t? She’s not the freak in the family though.”

The heels went back on as I avoided eye contact with her. Why was it so easy to talk to her? I’d known Natasha just over a month now and I was already pouring my soul out to her like I was in a confession booth. 

“I’ve come to realize that people fear two things: what they don’t understand, and what they chose not to understand. Not that it excuses anything, but I think if you were to give these up, it should be because you want to, not because no one else understands you.”

I watched her buckle on her own heels before asking, “You understand, don’t you?”

She just nodded slightly, leaving the both of us in a moment of silence thinking about our own lives and how they had each brought us to this moment with someone who had the capacity to understand how these unwanted skills were now an important piece of who we were. 

“Well, let’s try running again. Remember, we’ve only got a week and a half left!” 


	9. The (Not so) Good Doctor

It was a lot of work, but eventually I got the running in heels down well enough to move on to things even more out of my element: dressing up. Since there was still a chance, no matter how small, that this Doctor Hastings had seen me or knew about me, I was going to have to do a lot more than normal to not only look like I belonged at this fancy gala, but also to not look like myself. Natasha and Maria poured over me the day of the gala getting me ready like it was war paint rather than makeup on my face. For an added layer of protection, I even got a dark brown wig. 

“A wig?” I said as soon as Maria brought it up. Natasha left to grab it from wherever it was they were getting all of this stuff. “On top of all this? Yeah I won’t even be able to recognize myself.”

“How are you with contacts?” Maria asked.

“Nope, can’t do it.” 

She gave me a slightly exasperated sigh. “Not even for just one night?”

“Hey, I live my whole life behind a protective layer of glass,” I answered, adjusting my glasses on my nose. “I can’t just stick plastic in my eyes. I’ll leave my glasses off, but I can’t use contacts.” 

Natasha returned with an impossibly long wig and Maria seemed to let the issue drop as my eyes grew wide at the sight of it. 

“Oh great. That’s going to last a whole night,” I muttered.

“We’re pinning it up, don’t worry.” Natasha showed me how to put the wig on and it was another half hour while the two women bent my neck this way and that to get all the locks pinned and sprayed into their perfect place. 

“You know what, I take back what I said before. I would much rather learn how to run in heels again,” I choked out after coughing on hairspray. 

The two agents stood back to observe me once they were done and I was glad for all the makeup because without it I probably would have been as red as Natasha’s hair. “Well...” 

“What? Are we good? Please tell me we’re done,” I begged them.

Maria nodded. “Yeah, I’d say we’re done. I mean, I hardly recognize you, so this should work out well.”

Natasha seemed hesitant. “I guess so. I can’t say I love it more than normal Roen, but it’s good for what we’re going for.”

“When have I ever really been normal though?” I asked as I got up and trudged over to the nearest mirror.

I could have just as easily been looking out a window and come face to face with a stranger as looking in a mirror. My short brown hair was now piles of nearly black curls tucked into place, my round face suddenly seemed more heart-shaped, and I had none of my signature freckles anywhere in sight. I was kind of beautiful, but almost like a doll, and hard almost like I had been sculpted. It wasn’t real, and yet as I turned my face, so did the reflection. “Wow... you really weren’t kidding.”

“Good news is, you don’t look like Roen,” Maria said.

“Bad news is, you don’t like like Roen,” Natasha added. “Are you ready to go?”

I didn’t have much choice right now. “Yeah, as ready as ever.” I slid my glasses off my face and placed them into my clutch which also had a mini taser from Tony safely tucked away.

 

 

While I’d never ridden in a limo before, I was pretty sure that no one else had ever ridden in one with a handful of superheroes so it evened out. Everyone else commented on how different I looked and I realized this was how Natasha must have felt all the time. She was the one who always got dressed up to enter the danger zone and while they meant me no harm, I was silently begging everyone to just stop looking at me.

My senior prom was certainly nothing like this party which meant I was even more out of my element than I had originally thought. Cameras flashed and I remembered Natasha’s tips on keeping the stray hairs around my face, using my hand to gently block me from view, and keeping my head turned in towards them. The less I could be photographed, the easier it would be to keep myself hidden. Clint knew how to help out with that too. He masterfully put his hand up to wave or point or walk slightly ahead of me as the six of us made our way from the limo to the front door of a beautiful old hotel building. 

Next to me, Natasha kept giving me reassuring smiles and nods while she played up leading Steve down the red carpet laid out for us. The walk seemed to take nearly three times as long as it did because we kept waiting for those in front of us to stop taking a picture and dodging them ourselves. Clint kept his hand in mine or gently on my arm in a way that made me feel safe in such close proximity. I knew Natasha trusted him with her life and if the most secretive, untrusting person I had ever met could believe in someone else that fully then I could too. 

“Getting the hang of this?” he asked me as we finally made it to the front doors. 

I sighed a little but nodded. “At least that part is over.”

Behind me, Natasha let go of Steve’s arm and hugged my shoulders. “You did pretty well out there Roen. Are you ready for the hard part?”

“Ready to try.”

“Keep close to him,” she said, nodding towards Clint. “And you stick close to her.”

Clint took my arm and wrapped it around his own. “I will do my best. Ready to get down to it, Quirk?”

I smiled a little. “Let’s do this.”

Walking into the party was like something out of a movie for about ten seconds. I was surrounded by lovely art and intricate architecture, the people around me dressed in beautiful gowns and suits, and all the while music I had never heard yet instantly liked played above us. This was the point in the movie where someone in the crowd would look up to see me just having entered and stop everything to stare for a moment. Sadly, the only one I wanted that to happen with had already seen me plenty tonight and was walking in behind me. Luckily Tony and Pepper were in front of us so when everyone did turn to look, it was on them first. 

The movie moment quickly passed. Rather than looks like adoration or intrigue I found snobby people finding a way to look down their nose at me as I descended the stairs to join them. Clint patted my hand gently like he knew how I felt. 

“Don’t let their stares bother you.”

“It’s like they know I don’t belong here,” I muttered. “Like they can smell it on me.”

He nodded as he looked around. “Some people are just like that.”

“Tony and Pepper aren’t.” 

“No,” he admitted, “but they know how to play the part. And they have each other.”

I looked over at Pepper masterfully handling a number of people on her own while Tony entertained others with tales of new inventions. “They bring a new meaning to the phrase ‘power couple’ don’t they?”

Clint laughed a little. “I suppose they do. Come on, we have some work to do. Don’t look now, but off to the side there I think I see Hastings. Near the bar.”

I nodded and slowly turned my attention towards the bar where he’d indicated. I forgot for a moment that I didn't have my glasses on so everyone just seemed blurry to me past a certain distance, but I saw a man sitting alone at a bar and from the goosebumps on my arms, I figured he was right. "Let's get to it then."

In another part of the room, I made a signal to Natasha and gently nodded towards him. She saw him too and nodded, slowly making her way over there. Clint got caught up with someone from the ball who asked him about his donations and what research he was most interested in being done at this new hospital but I kept moving. I had to get close enough to figure out what Natasha needed to swipe from him. 

The two of us reached the bar at about the same time, keeping distance and Hastings between us. I ordered a drink and did my best to look discretely over at him. He wore a watch on one wrist, the one closest to Natasha, but not much else. I did notice a pair of very flashy cufflinks that no doubt brought a lot of attention to him so I decided to deny him that. If there’s anything I knew about rich New Yorkers, it was how to get under their skin. 

Hastings looked sideways at me as I set my glass down and took the chair next to him. I smiled as charmingly as I could manage--much more convincing than normal I hoped with my new makeover--towards the bartender as he passed. I swirled the rest of my drink in my glass, pretending not to have a care in the world as I pointedly  _ didn’t  _ notice Hastings turn slightly my way. As he glanced me over in his peripheral vision, I brushed stray hairs behind my ear and fiddled with the necklace around my neck that Maria had me trade for my crystal one. The pendant was much bigger than my little crystal, but it did it’s job in making me seem distracted. 

“Come to these types of events often?” Hastings asked next to me. 

Did I play the easily won over girl who flirts to keep him distracted while Natasha moves in to check for his encryption key, or do I play hard to get to give myself a chance to check as well? “None that you would have been invited too I suppose. I can’t say I remember you at all.” 

A mix of the two should work. 

“I know that I would remember seeing you. What is your name?” he asked, lifting his arm up to finish his drink as well as show off his obnoxious cufflinks. 

“Christine,” I answered. We hadn’t actually come up with a fake identity for me since I wasn’t supposed to have gotten this close to him, but my mother’s name was the first to come to mind. “And you?”

“Doctor Hastings. But you can call me John.”

This was shaping up to be just like every other time a guy had ever tried to hit on me at a bar except this time I couldn’t ask for the bartender to get me out or just flat out tell him that I prefer girls. So for now I had to play along. I made eye contact with Natasha who nodded to say she believed in me. She inched closer as I turned my attention back to  Hastings . 

“John. Hmm, quite the common name.”

He smiled a little like my banter amused him. “I suppose it is. Though I have yet to find one at my same ranking.”

“Your ranking?” 

Hastings nodded. “Don’t you know? This whole ball is basically a meet and greet with the top doctors starting at the new hospital.  _ My  _ new hospital.”

At least I knew this was the person we were looking for. “I see. How fascinating.” 

He continued to _wow_ me with the minute details of setting up his own hospital, the cutting edge work that would be done there all while I tried not to strangle him with the excess fabric of my dress for being in league with the people who had manipulated my DNA and so many others. Had he been the one? No, he was too young. But the fact remained that Hastings was one of them. 

Natasha grew closer and closer and I saw Clint and Steve make their passes through my field of vision enough to make sure I wasn’t alone. While I held his attention like a dog on a leash, I was also checking him for anything I could find that could be the kind of key we needed. At this point, all I could think of was that it was somehow hidden in his watch. A tiny microchip or SD card could fit there, but how were we supposed to get it? I hoped that’s where Natasha would jump in. 

The bartender came back around as I finished my drink and filled it for me, giving me a chance to tap my wrist lightly and hope that Natasha knew it was for her. I tapped it again as I turned my eyes towards Hastings. “And you’re the one spearheading all of this new medicine? What exactly are you the most excited for?” 

Hastings looked away from me finally and I was afraid I’d lost him. Instead, he checked his watch and adjusted his cufflinks before answering me like he was giving himself a chance to think of a more appropriate answer than ‘I plan on genetically engineering my own army of superheroes in league with a heinous group of people who use Hydra as a cover story’. There weren’t very many answers he could give me that were worse than that.

“There is a subset of our resources going towards cancer research actually. We have some hopeless cases coming to us for a last minute procedure that we’re hoping we can help or at least learn from.”

I tried not to get angry at the fact that he spoke as if these people weren’t going to suffer from his split priorities or like he was so great for allowing them into his pretty new facility where all he really wanted was to experiment on unborn children. So I forced a smile and tried not let it seem so. “Sounds utterly fascinating.”

On his other side, Natasha had made her way right to his side where she examined the watch and then ever so casually bumped into his shoulder. “Oh excuse me!” She smiled brilliantly as Hastings turned his attention to her. 

I finished off my second drink to prepare myself for the rest of the night. A glance behind me told me Steve was standing in a group with Clint, keeping an eye on the two of us while Pepper and Tony were being swarmed closer to the front door. We couldn’t rely on them so it was just the four of us.  While Hastings seemed enchanted by seemingly intoxicated Natalia Rushmore, she had a chance to fiddle with the watch on his wrist. I watched her closely and he seemed to forget all about me. I couldn’t blame him, Natasha looked absolutely stunning tonight and I had to remind myself that I already had a date so I had to avoid flirting with her. 

“Darling, not had too much to drink again, have we?” Steve said, coming up from behind the three of us.

Hastings turned first, looking extremely confrontational before noticing just who it was that spoke. Natasha slid her hand around his back to mine where she dropped a small microchip into my palm. “Oh darlin, you know I don’t get too overboard,” she giggled exaggeratedly. 

Clint appeared as well, sticking his arm out for me to take. “Doctor Hastings I presume. I hope our lovely ladies aren’t distracting you from the party. We can’t be monopolizing all of your time when there are surely many others waiting to speak to you.”

I smiled brightly as I turned with Clint to make our exit then let it slide from my face. Hastings kept Natasha a moment longer before Steve got her away too. We joined another group of people to avoid rushing out just as we left Hastings at the bar, talking about trivial things like the art going in the lobby of the first floor versus the second floor and so on. What made me even more angry was how easily Hastings seemed to fit in with these people which meant that a number of lives were being held in the hands of people who had no idea what was going on and didn’t care to ask.

Eventually, we made our departure, as a group of four cut down to a group of three when Clint/ James Rogers’ name was called, then to just Natasha and I when Steve stayed back to intercede on her behalf. With the two of us, it was just a matter of waiting, sliding past one or two security guards, and an electronic touchpad that may as well have been a simple door handle for me. 

Natasha was smiling a little once I opened my eyes and held the door open for her. “What?” I whispered.

“I’m just always amazed by your power is all. It’s amazing.” 

I slid my glasses back on my nose and decided not to answer. Instead, we moved to the computer in the middle of the room where the screen was littered with feeds from a dozen security cameras. I hoped that they wouldn’t be able to see when I changed the screen if I didn’t turn them off. “Let’s get this show on the road then.”


	10. Our Secret

Once I’d put the chip into the hard drive and gotten it all hooked up, I put my hand on the monitor and shut my eyes. Without Jarvis here to help me display things to Natasha, it was up to me to find what we were looking for in all of the code I found. Through it, I first found the plans laid for the hospital. Hastings wasn’t lying, there were plans for a cancer treatment center made up to be equipped with all the important tools I knew of and even more that I didn’t. I was worried about how much time it took to get through all of the plans before something caught my eye.

Sometimes as a code runs past my eyelids, bits and pieces stand out sort of like my mind had built up a filter based on past search history. In times like this, I was always surprised at how genetic engineering and a bit of unpredictable growth had completely altered my entire being. It both scared and amazed me. This time however, scared won out. 

“He’s... he’s...” I opened my eyes to find Natasha looking at me worriedly when my hand fell from the computer. 

“Roen what’s wrong?”

“It’s him, it’s been him this whole time! He was the one who did this to me!” my hands shook as I tried to process everything I’d seen. “And it’s only going to get worse...”

Natasha put her hands on my shoulders. “Roen, look at me, do you need light? Do you need anything, what can I do?”

I could feel anger seeping into my veins like it were being injected into me directly. “I am going to rip him to pieces!”

As I moved to pass Natasha, I almost fell over. I still hadn’t readjusted myself fully from the few minutes I spent in the computer and it nearly toppled me over. The fact that I was wearing heels and a long dress didn’t help matters. She caught me before I could fall and helped me into a chair, keeping herself firmly planted between me and the door.

“Roen, tell me what you found. Maybe I can help. How could Hastings have been the man who did this to you?”

“He did it to himself too. He has someone helping him, he targeted so many pieces of his own DNA that he stopped aging. Natasha, he’s basically immortal.”

She shook her head. “He can still be taken down, Roen, don’t worry about that. What did you see that has you so shaken? It’s not just that, I can tell.”

“He’s going to try to take advantage of more parents, the ones who can’t conceive or single mothers looking for a sperm donor. Even people who come in to freeze their eggs, these people are all going to be his targets. He’s going to be the sperm donor for all of them, he’s going to set it all up to look official and just do it himself! If that happens, we’ll never be able to save everyone, there will be more than we can track and more than we can contain!” 

Natasha tried to mask it, but I could see the look in her eyes and knew that it was plastered all over my face. “He’ll never get away with this.”

“Yeah, not once I’m done with him.” I tried to get up but Natasha kept me in the chair. 

“You need a clear head and we need a plan. We don’t know how many people here are in on it and we have allies just outside that door,” she said calmly. “You and I know what’s going on now, we need to get out of here so we can prepare. The two of us are all that stands in the way of this becoming our new reality. Remember the people out there that need your help. Thomas could wake up any day now and you are the only one capable of getting through to Niko. We need you, Roen.” 

I couldn’t say what came over me--if it was the way she looked at me like I held her every hope in my hands, the way she clung to my hands, or if it was just the words she spoke--but I pulled my hand from hers and put it gently on her cheek. I’d never been one to make the first move or to jump into things before, but Natasha felt like a safe spot in the middle of a crumbling world. When I closed my eyes to do something, I usually had to prepare to be disoriented, dizzy and plunged into darkness but this time as I shut them to kiss Natasha, I felt none of that. The world didn’t stand still or spin off its hinges, instead I felt her soft lips under mine and knew that at least for now, everything else could wait. 

What did surprise me was that I caught her off guard. She was always the one in control of herself, sure to never let other people surprise her and it seemed that I had done just that. After a second, she returned my kiss, surprising me this time. Her hand was more gentle on my cheek than I had ever felt before, yet the way she moved her lips against mine reminded me just who it was that was kissing me back; a strong, powerful woman made of willpower and beauty. 

Natasha was the one to finally pull away, resting her forehead against my own. “We should get going...” she muttered, though she laced her fingers into mine like she wanted nothing more than to stay here.

I smiled a little just hearing her voice so close to me, telling me she and I were really here and that that had really just happened. Then I had to remember where we were and what we’d come here to do. “You’re right. We have to get the others and get out of here. Maria needs to know, and Fury too.”

We both stood, letting our hands stay together as we left the dark room behind us, then reluctantly letting go just as we returned to the party. She left me with a last sly smile as she turned to fet to Steve. I surveyed the room to find Clint and just as I did, Hastings stepped into view. 

“Hello again,” he said pleasantly. 

My mother used to say that I wore every emotion clearly on my face and I only hoped that I had improved in hiding it as of late because the revulsion I felt at seeing his face and hearing his voice would have surely given me away. “Oh, Doctor Hastings.” 

“Where did your pretty friend get off to?”

_ Typical _ . “I’m sure I don’t know who you mean?”

He smiled at me which only increased my anger. I remembered the taser I had hidden away in my bag and debated using it now. “The lovely redhead who loves a good martini. I saw the two of you passing glances after she came over. Not jealous that she stole my attention?” 

Before I had a chance to fight down my sarcastic, biting remark, Clint appeared and took my arm. “There you are dear. I was beginning to worry I’d lost you in the crowd.”

He leaned in close and whispered that he was sorry as he took my face in his hands to kiss me. This time, the kiss took me off guard and I fumbled to remember that I was meant to kiss him back. I hoped that it looked less awkward than it felt and by the look on Hastings face, we played it well enough. He looked clearly annoyed that I hadn’t just been playing hard to get at the bar and I was not actually interested in him. 

“Doctor, I do hope that you will excuse us,” Clint said, winking. “The two of us will be leaving a bit early if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all...” He answered slowly. 

The two of us turned and made our way from the main room, up the stairs and finally outside where I felt I could breathe again.

“Roen, I am so so sorry, I know that that was sudden and I should have given you more warning, we should have talked about it earlier, I was just trying to help--”

“Clint, clint, I’m okay!” I put my hands on his shoulders. “Really, I understand what you were doing and it worked. I may not have gotten out of there without revealing myself if you hadn’t shown up, I am really okay. I know you didn’t meant anything by it or to hurt me at all.”

He nodded, still looking nervous that I secretly hated him now. “We should find the others. Tony and Pepper left just before I got you so I know they’re out here somewhere. Nat and Steve may still be inside.”

Pepper found us shortly after and it seemed like she could sense something was wrong, but this wasn’t the place to talk about it. All I could say for now was that he was who we were looking for. Natasha and Steve met us outside just as Maria showed up in a limo where we found Tony already seated. 

“Let’s hit the road. I never stay for the after party,” he said cheerfully.

“Not anymore maybe. Last year though...” Pepper teased him. “Well let’s just say it’s better for most of us this way.”

  
  


By the time I had finished telling the others, the filled in the range from me to Natasha. Steve remained calm, though clearly angry as his knuckles turned white from gripping the back of the chair he stood next to so tightly. Maria called Fury as soon as I had given her every detail I had and we could hear her stomping and pacing just down the hallway. Tony was livid, arguing with Pepper about how he should put his suit on immediately and throw this guy out into the harbor. Clint was a deadly sort of silent like he was replaying every opportunity he’d had to punch Hastings in the face throughout the night. It was comforting to see that my own reaction was not so crazy, but now we had to deal with this reality. And I had to get the hell out of this dress. 

“I’m going to change. I’ll be right back,” I mumbled as I left the Avengers behind me. 

I could feel all of their eyes follow me and just as I left their line of sight, a dull murmur of whispers broke out. I wanted to stop and listen in as I was always inclined to do, but I moved down the hall, desperate to get the hell out of this getup. Tearing the wig from my head was the first step and it felt like I was hit with a headache out of nowhere. I ran my fingers back and forth through my own short hair to shake it out from it’s matted form as I dropped the pile of dark curls on my bed. 

Next, I kicked off my heels and grabbed a wipe from the pile of makeup still scattered on the desk in my room. Taking off my makeup was one of the oddest experiences of my night, weirder than putting it on in the first place. Without looking into the mirror, I scrubbed off half of my face. When I finally did turn to look at myself, the disney move Mulan came to mind. It wasn’t quite as stark of a contrast as that, but it was certainly close. 

“Imagine. A simple girl getting dressed up for a day and falling for a daring, brave soldier,” I said as I scrubbed the rest of my face free of makeup. 

Finally letting my dress fall around my feet, I felt like me again. I could breathe more freely since I did not worry my stomach stuck out of my dress and I could let my shoulders fall as I didn’t have to keep my chest thrust out to keep the strapless dress up. An old t-shirt and loose shorts fit me much better and I was back to my old self again. 

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I wasn’t sure if this much less glamorous version of myself would have been quite so lucky in kissing Natasha as I had been earlier. I pushed that thought from my mind, there were much more important things to be done right now. 

Maria had returned and was pacing nervously while Pepper and Tony poured drinks for the rest of us. Steve still managed to look strong and imposing in just his undershirt and pants which on other people would have looked ridiculous, and Clint simply didn’t wear a shirt at all. I tried not to notice the light scars across his back and shoulders. Natasha had kicked off her heels like me and had Clint’s shirt tied around her top half and her dress unzipped to her waist. How did she still manage to look so pretty?  _ Focus, Roen. _

“So what’s the plan?” I asked, bringing everyone’s attention together. 

“Fury says he’s going to do his best to talk to some higher ups, but there’s no telling how long that would take us,” Maria answered, clearly frustrated. “It feels like they’re dragging their feet on purpose.”

I knew how she felt, like the people outside this room were all trying their best to get in the way of our mission. We couldn’t trust anyone outside of this team. Then an idea hit me. They were a team, they couldn’t act outside of S.H.I.E.L.D., but I could. They were helping me out and I couldn’t deny that they had been a huge help in keeping me and my family safe but maybe I would have a better chance taking Hastings out on my own. 

“Roen? Are you okay?” Natasha asked, looking at me from across the room. I hadn’t noticed when Pepper and Maria disappeared but they weren’t here anymore. 

“Sorry, lost in thought I guess.”

Her eyes scanned my face like she knew I was hiding something but she didn’t have the chance to press it further before Clint spoke up. “Well then, since we have at least a day or two before we can get started on this, if you all don’t mind, I’ll be getting back to my family now.” 

Natasha smiled a little and hugged him tightly. “Tell Laura and the kids I’ll be around when I can.”

“They’re already looking forward to it, don’t you worry,” he said into her hair. 

Steve and Tony said their goodbyes as I stood, unsure of where me and the great Hawkeyes stood on saying goodbye. We’d known each other only a few weeks now, but he had just kissed me earlier tonight so I figured that bumped up our friendship a little. He seemed to feel the same as he came in for a hug, holding me a moment longer than I expected and hugging me right down to my core. As little as I knew about him, I understood why out of everyone in the world, Natasha felt she could trust him with her life. I’d put a lot at stake in trusting Clint these past weeks and he had never disappointed me. I was a little sad to see him go.

“Bring me back pictures of your family,” I said as we finally pulled apart. “I’d love to see their faces.”

He nodded. “Sure thing. I’ll see you all soon.”

When the elevator doors closed behind them, Tony turned to Natasha and Steve. “That was some impressive acting on both of your parts I must say.”

Steve’s cheeks flushed a little as he tried to laugh off the joke. “Us, didn’t you see that kiss?” 

My heart leapt up into my throat thinking that somehow they’d seen Natasha and I in the dark. I had prepared myself for everyone on the team to know about me yet. My eyes darted sideways to Natasha who was looking down at her hands rather than at me.

“Roen and Clint? Come on kid, you can do better than that old man,” Tony said, jokingly as he handed me a drink like he could tell I needed it.

_ Right, that kiss _ . “Plus he’s married,” I said, taking it gratefully. “I doubt it will be going anywhere.”

Steve looked as relieved as I felt that I had taken the pressure off of him, but now I was faced with a conundrum. What were Natasha and I supposed to do now? We had a mission to accomplish, I was still probably a fugitive as far as S.H.I.E.L.D. officials were concerned, and oh yeah it wasn’t exactly socially acceptable. I should never have kissed her in the first place, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to regret it. I knew in my brain that I shouldn’t have, but my heart felt like it would skip a beat every time I thought about it again. Maybe I had made the right choice back there.


	11. Where's My Phone?

Eventually Steve left for his own apartment and Tony said he should be getting back to Pepper and I was forced to face Natasha alone. She had made her way to the couch in that time, less than five feet from where I sat. As the elevator doors slid closed behind Tony, I was wracking my brain for a conversation started, Natasha seemed way ahead of me. She pulled her feet up on the couch and twisted to lay her head across my legs. My heart beat sporadically like it couldn’t decide to jump out of my chest or stop all together. 

“You did really well tonight, Roen. We found out some pretty big stuff, how are you holding up?” 

I’m glad she asked me a question because I needed something to distract me from the way her eyes looked up at me through her dark lashes and her hair fell in a beautiful mess around the both of us. “Well, I’m not  _ happy  _ about what’s going on, but I’m glad we did this. If we know his plan, we still have a chance to stop him.”

“And about what this means for you?”

I sighed before I let myself answer. “Knowing who it was made me angrier at the time, but it also gives me focus. I now have a name and a face to put with the idea that someone went into my DNA without my permission and messed with it. That’s going to keep driving me forward even more now.” 

“Just don’t let it consume you,” she said softly, taking one of my hands in hers. “Revenge can twist you up inside and turn you cold and I don’t want that for you.”

As I used my other hand to play with the dark curls of her hair, the weight behind her words settled over me. She spoke like she came from experience which I figured was true. While I had come to love the parts of her that I knew about, it was clear to me that there were pieces of Natasha that were hidden from me--and probably the rest of the world too--because she was unable or unwilling to show those parts of her the light of day. Maybe just like with my powers, it had become easier keeping them hidden than trying to justify or explain them to others. I wish that I could say for certain that I would accept them no matter what, but I’m sure both of us had known someone we thought we could trust with our secrets who had proved us wrong. While we hadn’t been able to be completely honest with each other yet, we had both been taking steps to come close to honesty and for people like us, maybe we could be satisfied with that. 

“What helped you?” I finally asked. There was no way to know if she would answer or if I would know her answer to even be true, but giving her the opportunity to share her burden was the best way I could think to broach the bigger issue hiding there.

“Clint. He brought me back off that ledge. He brought me here, to my team at S.H.I.E.L.D. Even more importantly... he brought me home to his  _ family _ . Clint took me to their little farm in the middle of nowhere after a mission and I knew that he had a wife and, at the time, just a son but seeing them was something else. Cooper was so young and Laura just found out that she was going to have Lila, my favorite little girl in the entire world. Cooper was so pure and innocent and beautiful, he didn’t know the things that I had done. I was in awe of him, he was so perfect and I was sure that Lila would be too. As for Laura I was scared she wouldn’t want me in her home, I was sure Clint had talked about me before but she was amazing. I love his entire family so much.”

I smiled as she spoke, imagining Natasha playing with a little boy on the carpet in a big farmhouse somewhere. “Your best friend helped you out.”

Natasha nodded with a light smile on her face. “He did, they all did. We had to miss Lila’s birth but I went with him the moment we got back to the states and she was absolutely perfect. I adored her from the moment I saw her.”

I watched as her smile grew remembering Clint’s daughter’s first moments in her life and then slowly fade as if a dark cloud had moved in through her mind. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Like I said, I love Lila. I love Cooper, I love his whole family.”

“But?”

She sighed like she was forcing herself to tell me more. I knew how hard it was to trust someone and I also knew what it felt like to have a secret buried in your heart for so long you just hoped one day it would disappear. Telling someone else made that dream impossible, so I wasn’t going to push her. 

“But... Lila also broke my heart.” Natasha couldn’t meet my eyes and I was scared for a moment that I had gone too far and lost her. Then she sat up next to me and tucked her feet in under one side as she was leaning in towards me, looking down at her hands. “There’s this... ceremony they called it. In the Red Room. And seeing Laura and Clint with Lila, this beautiful little ray of sunshine made it so hard to know that... that I’ll never be able to have that.”

As it dawned on me what she was talking about, I realized just how much pain must have been flooding her even now just to think about it. I reached out to her now, taking her hands in mine and turning as much as I could to face her. Her eyes weren’t filled with tears like mine would have been, but they were hurting just the same.

“Natasha I am so sorry that that happened to you. Having your body messed with by someone else is something that I can understand, but I know that it isn’t the same thing. I know that I couldn’t possibly get close to feeling your pain. But I am honored to know that you trust me enough to tell me this. And I need you to know that this doesn’t make you any less of a person, of a woman at all.” I brushed some of her hair behind her ear and smiled a little. “You are stronger in every minute you breathe than some people are their entire lives. And I am so lucky to have met you and so are they. I can see it in how you and Clint are together and how you talk about his family and this team. It may not be the perfect nuclear family, but the one you have loves you very much.”

This time, it was Natasha who kissed me. She took my face in both her hands and brought our lips together again, different and yet still the same as before. This time, we didn’t have to worry about anyone walking in to find us, we weren’t in the middle of a mission, and--most importantly to me--I knew it was really me who she wanted to be kissing right now. Her lips felt the same though, soft and full. The flutter in my stomach was the same too. I kind of hoped that every time we kissed felt something like the first time so that I never gave myself the chance to forget it. 

“It’s a bit weird, don’t you think?” she asked once we’d finally pulled apart and I let out a small giggle since I just couldn’t hide how much my heart wanted to burst at seeing her there so close in front of me.

“What’s that?” I laced my fingers into hers as our hands settled in the space between us.

“That you think I am so brave for being about to carry my pain alone and yet I think you are the brave one for letting your heart be free to love while you carry the secret of your whole life inside you.”

I nodded. “It is rather odd.” I kissed the back of her hand. “But I think maybe we always see in others what they can’t see in themselves.”

Natasha’s eyes glided over my face like she was trying to commit it to memory. I couldn’t be sure, but a part of me wondered if it was a hint of sadness I saw in her eyes. “You should get to bed,” she said softly. “We need to get back at it first thing in the morning.”

“You’re right,” I sighed as I Hasting’s face floated through my mind. “We’ve got a super human on the loose trying to create a super soldier army and all we have is a billionaire, a 90-or-so-year-old soldier, two spies, and part of a government agency that’s only sometimes on our side.”

“And you.”

“Ah yes, and the hacker.”

She smiled a little and stood, pulling me up too. “Get some sleep, and let that hacker brain of yours get ready for tomorrow. We’re going to need it.”

  
  


The next morning, I woke up to the same room I’d been in for weeks now, but something felt different. I couldn’t immediately place what it was as I slid my glasses onto my face, but it was like the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end, warning me about something. It wasn’t until I reached for my phone that I realized what it was.

My phone was gone.

While to others this may have seemed like no big deal, I immediately started scouring the room to find it. Over the years of having these powers, I got used to the normal hum and drum of machinery and technology around me, I could tell my mother that we needed a new fridge weeks before anyone could notice a problem just because I was in tune with the things around me. But my phone was different, it had sort of become my security blanket. If I needed anything, I could use it and with my abilities, I could do more than anyone could imagine. I knew it’s molecular vibration like I knew my own body and knowing that it was gone threw me just enough off balance for me to notice. 

Once I cleared my room, I hurried out to the main room by the elevator, asking Jarvis if I’d left it anywhere else.

_ Phone, Miss Roen? I haven’t seen it _ , the voice informed me. 

“Did I have it last night?” 

_ I believe so. _ Jarvis pulled up an played a clip of our team coming up the elevator and debriefing, zooming in on me placing my phone at the table.  _ You had it there. _

I watched the tape run in fast forward until Tony left when Jarvis’ camera seemed to shut off. I realized that he’d given Natasha and I some privacy and I hoped that the flush in my cheeks now showed him that I understood and appreciated it. “If I had it then, why can’t I find it now?”

_ I am sensing some issues within my hard drive. Perhaps we could look into it? _

With a nod, I made my way over to the wall and put my hand up, delving into Jarvis’ mainframe directly. We searched together--well accustomed by now to working this way--until I found an odd bit of code that stuck out like a sore thumb. Javis sensed it too. When I went to look closer, it was like something short circuited in both me and Jarvis. My hand fell from the wall as my body spasmed like I’d been electrocuted and even once I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see a thing. 

“Jarvis?” I only heard static and parts of words as a response, but I couldn’t be sure if that was him or if it was just me being disoriented. “Jarvis?” I needed sunlight, but had no way to get it.

Something crackled above me that sounded like a light going out, though my eyes stayed dark. I tried reaching out to anything around me, something I could ground myself to and found the end of the couch first. Following that along, I tried to keep myself from panicking.  _ Come on, Roen, think. There’s got to be some way to get to someone. Some way to contact the team _ . I reached the end of the couch and realized I didn’t know if my abilities would work on the elevator like I’d planned. I had to get to someone and tell them to get Tony. Anyone who worked in or around this building may have seen something too and clearly Jarvis and I were up to something big here if it caught us both off guard. 

_ Mal...ware. Virus _ . I managed to pick out those two words from Jarvis’ static around me. Of course, I’d unknowingly opened a virus on Jarvis and since I had linked into his system, it had spread to me too. That’s why I couldn’t see and why Jarvis couldn’t talk, it was shutting down our systems. As soon as I realized that, I also realized that it wasn’t just Jarvis’ voice shutting out but also my hearing. 

Now seemed like the time to panic.

I dropped down to the floor, hoping I was crawling in the direction of the elevator and that I could make it there before I lost more of my senses, all the while trying not to cry thinking about my body shutting itself down while I could do nothing about it. Internally, I searched for any way to kick start my own body, I’d never tried to start myself back up again but now seemed as good a time as any. 

The ding of the elevator told me that I had been crawling in the right direction and that someone had just gotten up to this floor. I braced myself for it to be whoever had disabled me and Jarvis, but I was relieved to hear Natasha and Tony’s voices calling out to me instead. They sounded like they were just to the right of me, but two sets of hands pulled me to my feet and I realized I had lost all hearing in my left ear. Panicking even more now, I gripped onto both of the people in front of me, Tony calling out to Jarvis who couldn’t answer and Natasha telling me to breathe easy and try to explain what happened.

“I can’t see. I can barely hear you. My whole body is shutting down, Jarvis and I have a virus. A trojan horse.” I was probably yelling all of this at them, but even if I had my normal range of hearing I probably wouldn’t have been able to calm myself down anyways. 

I heard the muffled sound of Tony’s voice to my left and then the two of them lead me to a wall where Natasha put my hand up. I could distantly feel Jarvis struggling against the virus and reached out to him with everything I had. Once I connected with him, it was like we’d melded together. I was aware of my body, but as I blinked, I wasn’t seeing a blurry, slowly expanding light through my eyes, it was through Jarvis’ cameras. 

“This is trippy,” I said, hearing my voice echo all around the room but vibrating through my own ears. “What just happened?”

“Roen?” Natasha asked, looking around the room. “Roen, are you okay?” 

Through the cameras, I saw her gently touch my face, her other hand holding mine to the wall while Tony supported me. “Give us a minute, I think Jarvis and I can figure this out.”

It took a lot of effort and felt like we were trying to come up with code on a million different fronts trying to shut the virus down, but with Jarvis and I working together, eventually we managed it. The only way to get it out was to delete it entirely, meaning a few things from Jarvis had to go with it, but luckily for us it was nothing major. My eyes dimmed again as I retreated from his cameras and back into my own body. I could hear again and as soon as I opened my eyes, the lights disoriented me more than normal, but I could see again too. Swaying on my feet, Tony and Natasha caught me and let my hand fall from the wall again.

“You’re back! Are you okay?” Natasha asked, looking over my face like I was about to start spewing sparks everywhere. 

I nodded slowly, unable to find my voice for a moment. “Yeah... yeah... just need... some sun.”


	12. Finding the Phone

Once I was seated next to the open window, a cup of water in hand and my senses back to normal, I explained what had happened to me.Jarvis repaired the damages done to his system, joining in my storytelling to add whatever I missed.

“Did you get a look at the code before it got you?” Tony asked.

I shook my head. “No, it just overwhelmed me so fast. And the only way to get it out was to delete it, it’s gone now so we can’t even check it.”

Natasha was pacing next to me, passing in and out of my field of vision as I looked out at New York City sprawled below us. “How did it do that?” she demanded. “How could it shut down your senses like that?”

“I don’t know exactly how it works, but since I was in Jarvis’ mainframe, I suppose it was like I was just a part of that. Like a device you plug into a laptop. Our brains run on little electrical impulses, especially things like sight, sound and smell so if they did it right, I suppose I see how it could have happened. I was a bit preoccupied to notice a lack of smells, but I’m sure that happened too.”

“It could have been an accident too, maybe they didn’t intend for you to get the virus, just Jarvis,” Tony pointed out.

She didn’t stop pacing. “You need to be more careful.”

I turned around in my chair to look at her, annoyed she was suggesting this could have just been avoided. “Excuse me?”

“If you’re like a part of Jarvis or your laptop or whatever you can’t just click on things or however you do that. You need to be careful.”

I looked sideways at Tony who spread his hands like he wasn’t picking sides here then back to our pacing assassin. “You know I can’t always help it, right? It’s not like I have a mouse and a cursor, if I look at something or think about it it’s like clicking on it.”

She finally stopped to look at me. “Just be careful. I don’t want you getting in over your head especially if you’re alone.”

I tried not getting mad at her for treating me a child. I could hear her words saying she was worried for me, but I could also hear everyone else in my life telling me I wasn’t cut out to do things which was exactly the way to get under my skin. “Well I figured I’d just try to stop this from happening to anyone else. You know, messing with their DNA, genetically creating an army to follow him, and taking advantage of desperate parents. Just trying to do something good with these crazy abilities that I have that I never asked for.”

Tony stood up, waving his hands in the air like he was trying to diffuse the tension. “Well then, now that we have two missions maybe we should focus on solving at least one of them rather than... this.”

Natasha nodded, turning away from me. “I’ll go check other security cameras from other floors to see what happened.”

I waited until the elevator doors slid closed behind her. “I’m going to try to track my phone.”

Tony nodded. “I’ll keep looking with Jarvis into Hastings. Maybe some offshore accounts or surprise donors will give us a lead.”

The three of us split up to our own tasks and while we were all in the same room, I couldn’t forget the tension that hung over us. I felt bad for snapping at her while she was clearly just trying to look out for me, but I couldn’t quite get over that feeling of being belittled. It was one of my bigger character flaws, my pride. Still, I knew that to anyone outside of my brain really had no way of knowing what I really did or how it all worked. Even after nearly 25 years I still hadn’t figured it all out, I’d never gotten a virus like that before.

As soon as Tony left the room, I turned to her and was surprised to see she was already looking up at me. “Roen,”

“Natasha, wait. I’m sorry for snapping at you.” I said, wandering over to her. “I was rattled and it wasn’t your fault, I know you were just worried about me-”

“Roen, that was terrifying. I was worried we were too late, your eyes had circuits and code running over them, you were pale, I didn’t know what we could do or if we were too late. But I know that you know what you’re doing, so I’m sorry too.”

I smiled a little and sat on the arm of the couch next to her. “Mutual forgiveness?” she nodded. “Good, I think Tony ran out of here because of that tension.”

Natasha shrugged. “Well the coast is clear now.”

“Which means back to work I guess,” I said, grabbing my laptop and sitting next to her on the couch. “No luck tracking my phone yet. Whoever this is is pretty good.”

“Could they have just shut it off?”

“It seems that they took out my SD card and battery, making it pretty much useless but also beyond anything that I could use to track it, even satellites trying to pick up it’s frequency aren’t doing me any good here.” 

“Security cameras aren’t showing me much either. If they came all the way up here, it’s more likely that they didn’t use the elevators.”

I thought about that for a moment. We knew that Hastings was working with at least one other GEF like me, Niko, but we didn’t know how many others. Could one of them fly? Was one a teach genius? Could they shrink? There were so many possibilities and after seeing Thomas’ tree bending with my own eyes, I didn’t want to rule any of them out. “They probably found a way around it. We’re at a major disadvantage with them knowing about what I can do. We know Niko’s name and that’s it, I’m pretty sure she isn’t the only one of them either.”

Tony returned, clearly looking rather relieved that the two of us were speaking again. “Well, there were a few red flags I could pull up, I went to look through a few files to match them up and narrowed it down but one of these young ladies I think we would be interested in.” 

On the table in front of us. Tony slapped down a file with a picture of Niko on the front. The name read “Emi Nakamura” and inside it had a detailed list of the donations she’d made to Hastings’ new hospital. I had no idea where the money actually came from or how she’d gotten it, but I knew she’d played our same game. 

“She was there wasn’t she? Last night.”

Tony nodded. “It looks like it. And we completely missed her.”

“Do you think she knows about me?”

Natasha shook her head. “Hastings didn’t know about you while we were there, if she knows about you now and is the one who planted the virus, then they learned about you after we left.”

I thought back through the night. “It was probably because we couldn’t return the chip. He must have checked his watch later and it wasn’t there so he knew someone would have gone looking for it, someone like me.”

Tony looked at me apologetically. “And seeing as how we all drove back here together. It would have been easy for them to figure out that we were all working on this together.”

Natasha stood suddenly. “Then that means Hastings is going to try to run.”

“I want to go with you.”

“No, Roen, we need you to find your phone. Wherever Niko is is where you need to go. I’ll call Clint, just wait here and look for it while he gets here.”

“But--”

“Roen, Niko is the one we’re looking for now. With Hastings, all we have to do is go in there and face him, maybe arrest him if we can’t keep it contained, but we can’t do anything until we know what his hold over Niko is.”

I couldn’t argue that Niko was just as if not more important right now. “I just hope it was her that took it and not someone else.” 

The elevator doors slid open again, making Natasha sit on edge like she was expecting an attack. I gently laid my hand over hers and felt her relax at seeing it was just a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent called Moreno. 

For the month or so that I had been staying in Stark Tower, agents had been coming in with mail, slowing moving more stuff out of my apartment as I needed it, and updates on my family. Luckily there hadn’t been many of that last one other than they thought there was someone suspicious following my sister but it was just a classmate trying to ask her out. She said no in the end, but that was her business.

“Oh good, Moreno,” Natasha sighed. “I’m glad you’re here, I could use your help.”

She stood and met him in the middle of the room, talking about security measures and what happened earlier as I retrieved my mail from him. Their conversation drifted away as my attention went to the bills and junk mail in my hands. Living in my tiny apartment shouldn’t have made it as easy to save up money as it had been, but my job paid well and I always set aside as much as I could in savings so for now, the bills weren’t worrying me too much yet. A voice in the back of my mind sometimes brought it up but I had to remind myself that my phone bill wouldn’t matter much if we didn’t stop Hastings. 

What did catch my eye though was a letter from my landlord. I rented out my apartment in a pretty good place in town so I knew that the minute I wanted to sell my contract I would have no problem but it seemed that a month without setting foot inside made him think that I had abandoned it. The letter, once I’d ripped it open, was much more long winded than I needed it to be but the big picture was that since I wasn’t home and I couldn’t prove that I was living there anymore, he was kicking me out. I couldn’t remember if my contract had said anything about that now because all I could think about was finishing this mission and having nowhere to go.

“Hey, uh, Tony?” I asked, trying not to let my voice waver.

“What’s up, kid?”

“Would you mind too terribly about me using another room here for storage? I... I’m getting evicted, so uh- I need a place to put my stuff.” That’s it, there was no way to ignore the tremble in my voice.

Tony was suddenly at my side, looking over the letter with a hand stuck between giving me space and patting me reassuringly on the shoulder. “Was this in your contract at all? I have lawyers you know Roen, we can fight this.”

I looked up towards the ceiling, blinking tears from my eyes. “I don’t know really. I haven’t had to think about it recently, we’ve been so busy.”

He finally decided on that reassuring pat and his hand felt heavy against my shoulder. “We can figure this out. Give me a little bit.”

“We have bigger problems right now,” I reminded him, shaking my head. “I don’t think this outweighs super soldier warfare.”

“I’ll be quick. I’ll get Pepper on it too, no one ever tells her no. Including me.” 

He hurried off with my eviction letter before I could fight him much more. I hadn’t noticed when Natasha and Agent Moreno left, but suddenly I was alone. My mother used to hate the way I stretched out the sleeves of my sweaters and long sleeve shirts but when I got nervous or lonely, I had a habit of wrapping my hands up in the fabric around my wrists. I noticed my hands disappear into my sweatshirt sleeves but I decided that wasn’t going to be my biggest issue right now.

_ Focus, Roen, _ I told myself. “Jarvis, I’m giving you the task to find my phone. I need to look through the video and see if there’s anything I can detence on the feed like a loop or interference.”

_ Of course, miss Roen. _

I picked up Natasha’s laptop and restarted the surveillance footage, using this as a distraction from the eviction notice. The more I paid attention to minute details and time stamps for every frame captured on video looking for a slip up, the less I thought about anything else, not the notice, not the actual threat I was searching for, not even what happened to me just hours earlier. That is, until someone touched my shoulder and scared me into letting the laptop slide out of my hands and opening my eyes before I had a chance to prepare myself. 

The lights flooded my senses and I felt dizzy as I heard Steve calling out to me.

“Roen? Roen, are you okay?”

I blinked quickly, trying to reestablish where I was in the world and who was talking to me. “Yeah, yeah... fine, you just scared me is all.”

_ This wasn’t what happened earlier, _ I had to remind myself.  _ My body isn’t shutting down, this isn’t a virus, this is a real person. I am a real person. _

“I came over to see if you all needed help. Tony called just a bit ago and explained what happened.”

I nodded with a little sigh. “Yeah, fun times were being had here. Sorry you missed out on the party.”

He smiled a little like he saw through my attempts to be funny as a way to settle my own heart rate. “Sounds like it was a blast. What are you working on now? I saw Nat with Moreno downstairs already and she said you’d be up here.”

“Jarvis is looking for my phone and I’m going through the footage from the lobby. The only thing is, this person--or people--have some type of ability like Thomas and I do so we don’t really know what it is that they did to get in here. Maybe Hastings made up a shapeshifter on accident.”

Steve looked a bit distressed at that idea and I reminded myself that he was probably still trying to catch up on things he’d missed being stuck in a frozen ship for years and years. I went on to explain and we looked into the footage together, finding on or two things that initially looked conspicuous, but turned out to be nothing. When Natasha and Tony returned, we hadn’t made much more progress, but Jarvis had good news.

_ Miss Roen, I’ve located your mobile phone _ , his voiced said above our heads. 

“Awesome, where is it?” 

_ Keene, New Hampshire _ .


	13. New Hampshire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder, Kelsey is Roen's ex-girlfriend.

“Why would they take my phone to Kelsey?” I asked for probably the millionth time.

Natasha reached over and took one of my hands in hers. “We’ll just have to see when we get there, Roen.”

“Who is Kelsey again?” Steve asked from the front seat of the car. 

I hesitated. “An old friend. We don’t talk anymore.” 

Natasha loosened her grip on my hand as a sign that I could pull it away if I wanted to. I usually didn’t tell anyone in my life about my being a lesbian unless I needed to; if no one had to specify that they were straight, why did it fall on my shoulders to announce who I was attracted to just because it was different? But I couldn’t always bring myself to be casual enough with it to just drop an ex girlfriend into an already uncomfortable trip to go see her. And then I had to worry about Natasha feeling awkward being... whatever we were right now, and going to see my ex girlfriend because the people trying to track me down may be using her to make me give myself up. 

I leaned against the headrest, hoping there was no traffic from here to New Hampshire so we could just be there now. Luckily for us, Tony didn’t much like following speed limits. I hadn’t seen her in months and in the span of just three weeks, she drunk texted me, making me delete her number, and not I was driving four hours to go find her. Because life wasn’t complicated enough right now.

“How would they have even found her through your phone?”

I wished I hadn’t already puzzled out the answer because now it was apparent that I’d been thinking about it since I heard Jarvis tell me the GPS location. “Well if they went in through my Facebook, I still had some pictures up from the two of us put in a folder that I just never deleted. I don’t use social media as often as I used to, but that isn’t the point here. Anyways, they probably got her number from there and since we’re separated and we actually... stopped talking because of our last conversation on the messenger attached to it, they figured I wouldn’t have put them on the short list to be guarded by agents.”

“Which is why they didn’t go for family,” Natasha added.

“Yeah, they may have been looking into them already and realized S.H.I.E.L.D. was ahead of them in that department so they just went for the first one they could find that was still close enough for me to want to help.”

Tony looked at my through the rear view mirror like he could tell I was holding something back, but he didn’t ask. Uncharacteristically keeping to himself, but I appreciated it. I was dealing with enough right now.

For most of the trip, it was a lot of Tony and Steve talking to fill the silence. Steve was still amazed about the differences since he’d last driven this way. Apparently with the alien invasion and all the issues following it, he hadn’t had too much time to drive around since then. Natasha quietly told me about how tensions between the two of them when Steve and Tony first met. It seemed odd to think that two people who seemed to get along well now just a few months ago would have been at each other’s throats. Sure they disagreed, but everyone did that.

As much as I tried to focus on that or what was passing us by out the window, but it was more difficult than I hoped. I could avoid thinking about Kelsey for weeks and then the moment something came up that reminded me of her, here I was again. I thought I’d gotten closure the night I broke up with her, that that would be it and yet...

“Roen?” Steve asked, turning back to look at me.

I blinked back out of my own mind. “Oh, sorry. What happened?”

“We’re just entering New Hampshire now,” Tony repeated.

“Where do we go from here?” Steve asked.

“Well we don’t really have a way of knowing if they found her already so I guess her house first. Last I saw, she was living close to work so we could even split up and try for both.”

“What does she look like? We may have to pull her out if they spot us coming in and go for her,” Tony pointed out.

I thought back on the last time I saw her over a year ago. “Well it’s been a bit, but last I saw her she had short light brown hair, green eyes, freckles, a tan because she liked to be outside. She’s a bit taller than me which can’t change. She also has a tattoo on the back of her neck.”

“We’’l check out her apartment, you two should check the restaurant she works at,” Natasha directed. “I think if we walk up to the manager we may make it farther than two men coming to look for a twenty something girl living with a roommate.”

Tony shrugged. “Fair point.”

“We’ll call you if we find her,” Steve promised.

I just nodded. A city was coming up on the horizon and the pit in my stomach told me this was Keene, New Hampshire. The last time I’d been here, I’d spent a few days on her couch before Christmas. By early January I’d broken up with her and the guilt of all that never really left me.

Tony and Steve dropped Natasha and me off in front of the apartment building and I couldn’t bring my eyes away from the bedroom window I remembered was hers even as they said goodbye and pulled away. 

“I feel so guilty,” I mumbled, wrapping my hands up in the sleeves of my jacket. 

Natasha gently rubbed her hand over my back, not saying anything for the moment. The small pressure on my back telling me it was time to go inside was the only thing that broke my concentration. We walked in to find that the manager had stepped out for lunch, but that she should be back in just a few minutes. 

“You don’t have to feel guilty you know.” Natasha surprised me by speaking up as I tried to distract myself with business cards and pamphlets spread out on the front counter. 

“Then why do I?”

“Maybe because you know you should feel something, but you’re not sure what it is.”

I sighed, setting down a local pet groomer’s business card. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when I see her again.”

She nodded slowly. “Whatever it is, I’ll be here.”

That just made me feel more guilty. I had a beautiful, strong, intelligent woman standing just in front of me telling me that she was here for me and I didn’t even reach out to her. We were here to save an ex-girlfriend and I couldn’t get old feelings from resurfacing while Natasha stood there being so much more than I could ask for. “Thank you,” I finally managed.

“There’s something else bothering you too. I didn’t bring it up earlier because then this happened, but maybe it will work as a distraction. What happened after Moreno and I left?”

I almost laughed spitefully. Right, that, how could I forget?

“I’m getting evicted,” I said, hollowly. “Got the letter from him just this morning.”

“I’m sorry Roen,” Natasha said softly, moving closer but still giving me space. I appreciated her ability to read people in situations like this. She could tell what I needed almost better than I could. 

“What am I even supposed to do after this?” I asked, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with everything that had happened to me today, this week, this month, ever since I was born, all of it. “Do I just go back to my old life and pretend that I never met any of you, I just pretend that I didn’t... I don’t even have anywhere to go anymore. I lost my apartment, my mother doesn’t have any room for me, my dad doesn’t want me there, I can’t stay here, it’s like... like nothing ever lasts. Do you know how that feels? To realize that no matter where you go, you’re just going to have to leave again. That you’re never really going to find a home in this giant stupid world.”

Natasha nodded as she took my hands in her own. “All the time.” My chest was still rising and falling heavily from my rant. Of course she knew how that felt, it was stupid of me to even think that my problems matched hers. “Do you know when I don’t feel that way?”

I shook my head slowly. “Tell me.”

She looked down at our hands for a moment before answering. “Right now. Times like this. When you spill out all of your feelings and it’s like you’re taking them right from my own head and putting them out there. In a way that I am still learning how to.” Natasha looked right into my eyes and I stared back into hers, coming to terms with the idea that maybe--just maybe--she was really telling me that I could mean as much to her as she did to me. “We will get you through this, Roen.”

While her words didn’t take away my problems, they suddenly felt just a little bit easier to bear. I kissed her quickly, worried the manager would pop back in if I took too long. “Thank you, Natasha.”

She smiled a little then both our heads turned as the apartment manager returned. The man looked at how close we stood to each other, our hands held between us and I’m sure the slight rosy hue in my cheeks and seemed to understand our relationship as if he had just caught me kissing her. “What can I help you two with? I can point you two to a more... lenient complex if that is what you’re here for.”

My hands slid out of Natasha’s and she dug into her pocket, slapping down a badge on the counter as he moved behind it. “Actually, we need to find someone. Detective Romero.”

The man stuttered out an apology and asked what he could do for us today. I tried to hide the smile seeing her scare a homophobe caused, but I’m not sure I did the best job. 

In the end, we found out Kelsey had moved out just two months earlier. She didn’t leave an address for her mail to be forwarded to, so we were back at zero. I couldn’t even be sure at that point that she would be working at the same place either.

Natasha lead me down the street as she tried to settle my nerves. If we couldn’t find her, then maybe there was a chance they hadn’t found her either, or so she kept reminding me. I was still nervous that there wasn’t enough hope of that, but we could only hope for now. 

That is, until I saw her. 

Natasha was just getting on the phone with Steve when I saw her, phone pressed against her cheek and two dogs on leashes walking towards us. Her once light brown hair was even lighter now, but that was definitely the Kelsey I remembered. I gently tapped Natasha’s arm, getting more frantic as my ex-girlfriend drew closer. 

When she finally locked eyes with me, Kelsey froze. “I’m uh... going to have to call you back I think,” she said as she hung up her phone. “Roen...”

“Uh, hi Kelsey.”

Natasha looked between the two of us and in an attempt to ease the situation, she reached out to Kelsey. “I’m Natasha,” she stuck her hand out for a handshake but it wasn’t reciprocated.

Kelsey looked her over and I could see her face twisting like it did whenever I disagreed with her. “What do you want?”

“I know the last time we talked--”

“You broke up with me? Yeah, good times. I remember how I spent nearly $300 for you to come over and spend the week with me and what I thought was a good week ended up with my girlfriend saying we were suddenly too different and not compatible,” she sneered at me. “Yes, I remember the last time we talked, now why are you  _ here _ ?”

Her words felt like a knife and the tone in her voice made it dull and painful. However, the time away from her did make it easier to realize that her voice held no real sadness, just anger and a hint of jealousy. “Well, you may be in danger. I just need you to come with us.”

She looked back to Natasha with guarded eyes. “This is why you broke up with me isn’t it?”

Natasha shook her head. “We just met two months ago, if Roen broke up with you, that was because it was in her best interest. Clearly.”

“Well now as much as I’d love to go along with you and your... friend here, I’m actually pretty busy today.” 

“This isn’t a polite suggestion, we need you to come along with us. Not for your sake, but for Roen’s. I couldn’t care much less about what happens to you beyond today.”

I could only blink at Natasha’s defense against Kelsey. A year ago, I would have fought anyone who tried to say that to her before. Now, I didn’t know what to say. Apparently neither did Kelsey because she just shut up.

A movement over Natasha’s shoulder alerted me to the fact that we weren’t alone. For a moment, I almost didn’t pay attention to who it was I spotted, then she spun on her heel and ran away from us and I knew that I’d been right. Niko had been the one who stole my phone and as I took off running after her, it dawned on me that she was much more powerful than I had originally anticipated.


	14. Catharsis

As soon as Niko turned a corner, I lost her. I may have been jumping to conclusions, but I was pretty sure at this point invisibility was her G.E.F. given ability. It made tracking her down maddeningly more difficult. Natasha was right behind me by the time I came to a stop, staring down a street where there should have been at least one person running from me and yet there were none. 

“She’s gone,” I panted. “I lost her!”

“It’s was Niko wasn’t it?”

“She just disappeared, she was just in front of me, if I’d grabbed onto something electric, we would have had her, she was right in front of my eyes!” 

Kelsey finally . “What the hell is this all about?” she demanded. I assumed Natasha told her to come along otherwise she would have just left us.

“That is the person who may be trying to kidnap you.  _ That’s  _ the only reason I’m here,” I answered evenly. I could feel a part of myself wanting to shrink down under her gaze the way I used to but the other part of me knew better now. “You have to come with us or you’re on your own against her.”

Kelsey shook her head. “Okay, but I’ve got to get these dogs back. I’m just walking them for my neighbor.”

I rolled my eyes. Kelsey and her dogs. “Fine we’ll stake it out at your place. I hope you have enough room for four people.”

“Four?” she asked.

  
  


The apartment fit us all just fine but with two superheroes, my ex girlfriend and my... Natasha in one room, I felt like I could hardly breathe. Once we got down just the basics--about how someone was looking to get to me because I knew some secret information--I excused myself. Feeling everyone’s eyes on me was too much to handle with the day I’d been having, and I was staring to suspect Kelsey was going to start hitting on Natasha. At the same time, Tony and Steve left to setup some surveillance and see if anyone had seen Niko sneaking around that day. If she could turn invisible, it was doubtful but I welcomed any reason to get the apartment down to the least number of people possible. 

I turned on the faucet and filled my cupped hands with water, splashing it on my face. When I got nervous not only did I play with the ends of my sleeves, but my face felt hot and soon enough so did the rest of me. Like I was an overheating computer reaching its limit. Hopefully I could get ahead of it and I wouldn’t end up crashing like too many of my laptops had in the past. I gave myself a few seconds to try to match my breathing to a soothing song I hummed so often I’d forgotten the words to. I just opened the door when I heard Kelsey’s voice. 

“You’re an agent then?” she was asking. 

I could imagine literal walls going up between the two of them. “It’s a bit of a secret you know. We’ve told you as much and probably more than we should have.”

“Secrets? Interesting. Can I get you a drink?”

“I’m fine.”

Kelsey made a small noise I remembered as a mocking sort of laugh that used to make me blush from embarrassment. “You’re one of the ones who doesn’t drink on the job?”

“At all, really.” I almost laughed with the short, clipped sentences she used against Kelsey. 

“Alright, I’ll let that subject go,” she muttered. “So how or why did Roen tell you we broke up?”

Natasha hesitated to answer like she was considering yelling at her for even opening her mouth. “What makes you think she told me anything?”

Kelsey scoffed. “You act like you’re protecting her from me. I want to see how much she lied to you about how we broke up.”

“Short story was that you were bad for her. I don’t have all the details because I don’t pry into other people’s lives like some people, but she made the right choice for herself.”

“Always did think of herself first,” Kesley muttered. “Did she tell you about her trip? All the way over here to see me for a week. I opened up my home to her, I took her out to dinner, I treated her great, I dropped $300 that week. A month and a half later I get a text-- _ a text _ \--saying we can’t be together anymore. The whole time I was living here she only came to see me that one time. Girlfriend of the year.”

I popped out of the bathroom before Natasha had even gotten a full angry word out. “You were manipulative to me every second we were together and even when we were just friends before that! And clearly what upsets you the most about our breakup was the money you spent, not losing me, you didn’t even care did you?”

She looked shocked that I would dare raise my voice against her but she quickly composed herself behind a face I’d seen a million times before. One that used to make me feel guilty and shrink back into myself but it didn’t work this time. 

“Do you deny you never came to visit me?”

“How many times did you visit me, Kelsey?” I countered. “And how many times did I have to tell you I had a job and bills to pay, I couldn’t just drop everything I had going on whenever you asked me to come running.”

“Oh don’t get me started on you and money!” Kelsey turned back to Natasha like the two of them were gossiping without a care in the world. “This one had to keep up having her own apartment in New York, was always too good for a roommate. She used that as the excuse all the time.”

I could feel my face getting hotter but this time it wasn’t because I was nervous. “I couldn’t get a roommate! You had no idea why, you just assumed I was stubborn well I couldn’t get a roommate because I couldn’t even tell you about the biggest secret of my life, how was I supposed to live with someone I couldn’t tell either?” 

“Now I find that you kept a huge secret from me our entire relationship, why am I not surprised? You wouldn’t even tell me who you voted for when we went and voted together even though I told you!”

“Because you voted for Mitt Romney! He was against gay marriage!  _ I’m  _ gay, Kelsey, I know you never wanted me to say that and you never wanted to say it about yourself even though you were in a relationship with me, but I couldn’t get over the fact that with every choice he made you never would have changed your mind about it. Did you not realize how much that hurt me?”

“It’s not like he won,” she said, her voice smaller now.

I scoffed and had to look away from her but my eyes landed on Tony and Steve standing awkwardly in the doorway. I hadn’t heard them come back in over our fight, but by the shocked looks on their faces, they heard enough of what I’d just said. 

“I... I gotta go.” I said, my voice hollow as I grabbed my jacket and pushed past the two of them. 

They called out my name as I left, but I couldn’t stop and listen to them now. 

That’s never the way I wanted to come out to anyone, it was supposed to be better than that and on my own terms. I didn’t know the neighborhood at all, but I knew that I just needed to get out of that apartment before I suffocated. Tears ran down my face and I didn’t try to stop them. This was the messy break up I thought I’d avoided all those months ago. This was the fight, the hurt, the tears I thought I’d found a way out of. I’d had my fair share when it first happened sure, but I had a habit of pushing my emotions away until they exploded in my face much like right now. 

I stayed in the apartment complex which was much bigger than any I’d ever seen in New York. New Hampshire was so much more spread out than New York which just made the open skies feel lonely and barren. It wasn’t stifling, but it wasn’t alive like my home. There were at least two pools so I found one farthest away and sank into a lawn chair that probably hadn’t been sat in in months. 

“Great job, Roen. Blew your top and outed yourself to everyone, nice going,” I muttered as I wiped at my face. 

With almost everyone I’d ever come out to, I had it planned out. I told my mother before I took off to spend the night at Kelsey’s house, I told my dad and my sister over ice cream, I even made the choice to tell Natasha rather than try to keep it a secret when it would have been easy to. I came out to Kelsey first, before anyone else and while she didn’t seem to care much and sort of ignored me, it was my choice to tell her. But this wasn’t my choice and now I was stuck out in the cold winter air with a wet face and no desire to go back inside. 

“Roen?” Natasha’s voice called out softly after a few minutes. “You got pretty far, didn’t you.”

I sniffed and did a final sweep under my eyes. “I didn’t want to be just sitting in the grass so I found a chair.”

She pulled another chair around to sit facing me and sat down, not saying anything while I got my breathing back under control. “They don’t think any differently of you, you know.”

I looked up at her finally, noting the slight pink touch to her cheeks from the cold. Beautiful as ever. “Really? I mean I basically lied to them and that’s definitely not the way I would have chosen to do it.”

She nodded and took my hands in hers. “Trust me, those two have seen enough crazy stuff in their lives to not look down their noses at a girl who likes girls. Besides, it’s you. None of us could ever hate you. You’re a part of the team, Roen.”

“‘Each relationship nurtures a strength or weakness within you’,” I quoted. 

“Michael Murdoch?” she asked.

“Penelope Garcia from Criminal Minds. At least, that’s who I first heard say it, but sure it was also from Michael Murdoch.” I smiled a little. “I’m a part of the team?”

Natasha smiled too. “Of course. We’d never get anywhere without you.”

There was more I wanted to say but as I realized she didn’t have a jacket on, I realized there was more going on than what words were jumping around in my head. “I guess we have to go save Kelsey now.”

“Sadly yes. She’s not my ideal victim, but we have to do our jobs, right?” 

I sighed exaggeratedly and got to my feet. “I suppose so, yes. And get you a jacket.”

“Right, that sounds like a good idea.” She dropped one of my hands but kept hold of the other. I figured now there was no real reason to let go anymore and smiled a little just at that. I hadn’t been able to come out the way I wanted, but if nothing else I was out now and this... well this was nice.

We made our way back to Kelsey’s apartment and I realized that I’d finally gotten my closure. Kelsey and I got our screaming out, we yelled at each other and we finally had to face each other again. It was terrible, but dammit, it was cathartic and I felt better now. Walking back into her living room didn’t feel as stifling this time; I’d been given the chance to say everything I wanted and now I was just here to get a job done. 

“Alright, back to work,” I said as I walked in, seeing the computer screens that took up her table now. “Anything so far?”

Steve and Tony both looked at me like they were assessing weather or not to bring it up and decided not to. Instead, they brought me up to speed on where they’d put up cameras, the two closest to us with a heat sensor in case Niko got in past them, Kelsey sat on her couch avoiding us and I was happy with that. For the rest of us, we kept our minds on our work. We stuck to multiple screens, hoping to see someone who looked like Niko or the thermal cameras a heat signature that didn’t appear as a person. 

It took almost two hours before we saw anything, but then there she was again.

“I knew it!” I shouted, pointing at the screen in front of me. “She’s invisible!” 

“More important things to worry about, Roen,” Natasha reminded me as she grabbed her gun from her waistband. “Let’s go get that girl.”


	15. Showdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this took forever to update! I've had a crazy time lately but we're getting to the end of the story now so hopefully I can finish it out quickly.

As soon as the four of us popped out of the small apartment, Niko shimmered back into view like we’d startled her. She quickly did the math and, seeing herself quite outnumbered, turned on her heel and ran in the opposite direction. Natasha gently tapped my arm to tell me to stay back as the others ran after her. As much as my legs wanted to follow, if Niko wasn’t here I was the only one staying back to defend Kelsey. While being alone with her didn’t sound any better, it was necessary. The trouble of being a budding hero I figured.   
Since Kelsey hadn’t moved outside like the rest of us, I planted myself in the door frame to be sure I could see anyone else approaching. Lucky for us, Kelsey was on the first floor of the building.   
“Thank you...” Kelsey said gently from behind me. I jumped a little then turned to face her. “You came all this way to protect me. I’m really very grateful, Ro.” This was how I’d gotten past all of our fights before. Because sometimes she could be like this.   
“It’s me they were after anyways. This isn’t your fault, this is me trying to make sure no one gets hurt because of me,” I answered. “I’m sorry for it being you they came after.”  
She came closer, looking past me out the doorway. “Would they really have hurt me?”  
I turned away from her and put my eyes back to work surveying our surroundings. “I don’t know. I don’t know much about them at all really.” Niko was so young, younger than me, how could she have gotten so tangled up in all of this? They didn’t raise her so how had she gone through her life without loathing the people like Hastings who had done this to us? We were so connected and yet so very, very different.  
“I’m not a lesbian you know.” Kelsey said after a brief pause. “I’m bi, not gay.”   
“The word itself wasn’t exactly my issue there. I mean I’m glad you figured it out and that’s cool, be bi, be happy but when we were together would it really have killed you to have at least acted like it?”  
She didn’t respond right away. “No, not killed me I suppose. But my mother might have.”  
“Since when did you ever listen to your mother?”  
“Since we broke up.” She leaned against the wall beside me, facing opposite directions now. “She thought you were pushing me to be a lesbian like you.”  
I set my jaw and clenched my hands into fists to fight back yelling at her again. “You were the one who started it.”  
Kelsey nodded slightly and looked sideways at me. “Maybe I did.”  
“You flirted with me all the time.”  
“I guess so.”  
“You’re the one who asked me out.”  
“That’s true.”  
“So why?” I asked, tearing my eyes away from outside. “Why do all of that? Why me? We were best friends and I never pressured you to be more than that, I didn’t think you liked girls. I never would have asked you because I didn’t think you’d ever feel that way about me, not really.”  
Her eyes searched my face like she was looking for the right answer written there. “I don’t know.”  
“Well you can’t just treat people like that. You can’t use me to figure yourself out, you can’t manipulate me until I break and snap at you, you can’t just expect me to hang on while you attempt to figure it all out.”  
Kelsey turned towards me now and I realized how close we were. “You mean if I knew I was bi before we dated maybe we wouldn’t have broken up?”  
“No... there were other reasons we broke up.”  
“Don’t worry about that. Pretend we hadn’t dated before. Pretend we’re friends right now, just like we used to be. If I asked you out now, would you say yes?”  
If we were still friends, I probably would have. “No.”  
“You’re lying, Ro, to me and to yourself.”  
“I’m not dating you ever again. We don’t work together. And besides, I’ve moved on from it.”  
“Ah yes, the pretty redhead. An agent, a bombshell, a hero, what doesn’t she have?” Kelsey asked. “You don’t think that’s a little too much?”  
I raised my eyebrow. “Too much?”  
“For you. I mean, she’s basically perfect. You don’t think that would be too much for you?”  
I couldn’t deny that I hadn’t briefly thought about that before. Natasha wasn’t perfect, no one was, but she was pretty damn amazing. I knew that and clearly Kelsey did too. Maybe she was right and Natasha and I wouldn’t last either.   
But that didn’t concern her.   
“If you’re trying to manipulate me again, it’s not going to work anymore.”  
She put her hand over her heart like my words hurt her. “Ro, I’m just looking out for you. We were best friends and girlfriends at one point, I know you better than anyone.”  
I hadn’t noticed it until I went to move but she’d slowly pushed me to the other end of the doorway, leaving me nowhere to turn now. “Kelsey, go sit down. You’re out in the open here.”  
“Roen? Will you kiss me? One more time.”  
“No.”  
“I can’t even remember our last kiss. I didn’t know that would be the last one, it’s like we never had a last kiss. Please?”  
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone come around the corner. I’d never been so happy in my whole life to see a stranger running towards me.   
“Get down!”   
I shoved her backwards into her apartment and pulled the door closed behind me. The guy had something in his hands that I couldn’t see but the way he ran towards me told me that he would know pretty well how to use them. I ripped off one of Tony’s cameras from the wall next to me and close my eyes. Looking through the lens now, I saw him still charging towards me. With a little bit of maneuvering, I managed to get the camera to flash a laser into the man’s eyes as well as set off sparks from the wires I had broken. It wasn’t the safest thing to do over grass that clearly hadn’t been watered recently, but it worked.   
He dropped what I discovered was a smoke bomb as he’d released the mechanism that set it off. I covered my mouth with my arm as I opened my eyes and took in my surroundings. He was stumbling around about 20 feet from me, clearly dazed so I took my shot. Using everything Natasha had taught me, I attacked and got him to the ground. I snatched the second smoke bomb from his hand as he tried to catch his breath amid the smoke and retreated to Kelsey’s apartment.   
I found her watching the screens when I burst back in, coughing smoke out of my lungs. “That door isn’t going to keep the smoke away, we need a way out.”  
“I don’t have a back door,” she said, clearly panicking.   
“Then we’re using a window.” I pulled Kelsey to her feet after locking the door behind me and we headed back into the apartment. The bedroom door was open and I saw a big enough window for us to crawl through so that’s where we went first. I unlatched the window and kicked out the screen while she clung to the back of my jacket. We’d never been in any sort of dangerous situation before so I’d never realized how she might act when she was really scared. It was much different than I would have imagined.   
“You first.”  
“What if they’re out there?”  
“People can be hit, gas can’t. We need to get out of here, now go.”  
Kelsey nodded and climbed out quickly then I slid out behind her with the other smoke bomb still clutched tightly in my hand. “Where is the most populated place within a few blocks of here?”  
“Uhh- I guess the grocery store? It’s just down that road then turn left and you’ll head straight into it.”  
“Go there now. Do you have your phone?”  
“By myself?”  
“Yes! Do you have your phone?”  
“Yeah, yeah I do.”  
“Leave it, they have mine and can track your phone.” I took it from her hands and tossed it back inside on her bed. “Get to that grocery store and call 911, tell them you saw smoke, don’t say you live there, don’t say what it smells like, just say there’s smoke and you saw people running around. Go now, Kelsey, go!”   
She nodded and took off running away from the apartment. I could only hope that I hadn’t just sent her into a trap. Turning my attention back to the building, I was now locked out, not that that would be much of a struggle for me, but we also had this gas leaking in to other people’s apartments. I ran around, banging on windows and throwing rocks up to other floors, screaming fire and smoke and anything I could think to get them out.   
Luckily it was the middle of a work day so most of the apartments weren’t open. Less lucky was the fact that I was now bringing attention to myself. The man with the smoke bombs broke down the door and I saw him through the window Kelsey and I had used to escape. I released the lever on the bomb in my hand, threw it down the hallway, and pulled the widow shut as far as I could from the outside. The man was coughing and sputtering as he was engulfed in the smoke.   
I ran after that, scared to see what I’d just done to someone else in order to save Kelsey and myself. I found where Steve Tony and Natasha wound up as I turned a corner and saw them fighting off a group of people who again looked like a S.W.A.T. team. I didn’t see Niko but I figured with her power she was less of a fighter and more of a spy. If that were true, she could be anywhere, even chasing after Kelsey right now.  
A few feet away attached to the side of the building was another camera. I crept over to it, hoping not to make a show of myself and tore that one off as well. Looking through it’s lens again, I searched in the direction Kelsey had gone for another thermal figure. Sure enough, there she was, headed down an alleyway in the same direction.   
I stuck the camera in my jacket pocket for now and ran faster than I can ever remember running before. Except maybe that day in the cafe. I hoped Kelsey’s knowledge of the route got her far enough ahead if I couldn’t stop Niko in time. I pulled the lens out of my pocket and saw through the thermal lens when it was knocked from my hand and I was shoved into the wall beside me.   
A little dizzy now, I put my arms up to protect my face and peek through to see Niko now standing in front of me. In the picture I’d found of her, she had pretty long hair and brown eyes. Now it was chopped to her shoulders and pulled off her face in a ponytail and her eyes seemed so much older than she could have been.   
“Niko... Niko Tanaka?”  
She glared at me and put her hands up like she was ready to attack me. “Roen Atkins. We weren’t sure what you looked like, all we have is a baby picture and some old elementary school photos.”  
“I know how to cover my cyber tracks.” I stood up straighter now, not dropping my defenses yet. “Why are you doing this? Why would you be on their side?”  
Niko looked at me like I was just a child who couldn’t understand such things. “You wouldn’t understand. But you could. IF you come with me, with us right now we’ll leave everyone else here alone. Your team, your girlfriend.”  
“Ex.”  
“Oh yes, Kelsey West as well.”  
I couldn’t imagine how they’d found out Natasha and I were more than just teammates but I didn’t have the time to blush over it now. “I would never give these abilities to those people.”  
“They’re the whole reason you have them!” She snarled at me.  
“Then take them back!” I screeched back. “I have had to live my whole life feeling like a freak, tearing up relationships and preventing new ones because of what they did with no regard for my life or for any of ours. You know there was a boy out there like us named Aram. He could set things on fire and he never made it past toddlerhood. Did they tell you all of that?”  
Niko nodded sadly. “Yes, we heard about Aram.”  
“And that doesn’t make you hate them as much as I do?”  
“They did not kill him.”  
“They gave him the power that did it!”  
“You did not perish. Nor did I or Thomas or Lana or Gerard or any of the others.”  
“There’s-- who’s Gerard?”  
She smiled a little which made me angry. “He’s 21 now. And he will be here and second I’m sure. He can show you his power himself if you chose not to come on your own.”  
I was going to have to get her incapacitated before Gerard could show up then, maybe find a tracker or communication device they used to signal each other once she was down. “I think I’ll put my money on my own team, thanks.”  
A quick survey around me told me there were phone and cable wires running all along the back of this building. I hadn’t really tried to use wiring to do whatever I wanted before, I usually tried to keep it close to its original purpose, but I didn’t have too much of a choice right now. When Niko lunged at me, I dove to the side and grabbed a 2x4 piece of wood from the ground, swinging it as hard as I could. I successfully knocked her off her feet, but she blocked part of the blow so she wasn’t out yet.   
With the broken end of the 2x4, I ripped up a few of the wires. I wasn’t sure if it would hurt me, but as Niko was already getting to her feet, I didn’t have much choice. Slapping my hand over the exposed ends of the wires, I felt a sharp pinch but pushed past it. Sending impulses through the wires like a heartbeat, I hoped I got enough power through them to do what I needed.   
While my eyes were shut, I was open to attack so I had only gotten a few through when Niko knocked me to the ground. The wood tumbled from my hands so I was without a weapon again. She stood over me for her attack but I’d learned from Natasha that just because you’ve given up the high ground doesn’t mean you’ve lost. I kicked her knee sideways, making her fall down next to me. Niko glared daggers at me know as she lunged at me again, sloppier this time so I caught her arms as I came up to a sitting position. I pushed back on her arms as I jumped up to my feet, using the momentum to push her back as well as get myself hovering over her and pinning her arms above her head on the concrete.   
Just as I did that, we heard a seiren down the street speeding towards us. That meant Kelsey had made it, she was safe there and hopefully with police and firemen swarming the building, the fighting would split up. Then, my plan worked too and the fire alarms in the building next to us went off.   
I saw something rise from the apartment building and realized it was Tony. In his suit, which I hadn’t noticed he brought along, he flew over to me as Niko shimmered out of view underneath me. It was admittedly more difficult to hold onto her when she was invisible, but Tony could see her through the suit’s mask so when he landed next to me, he took over. Clipping something similar to handcuffs on her, Tony pinned her there like the handcuffs weighed a ton.   
“Are you okay?” he asked, turning to me with the mask opening so I could see his face.  
“Yes, what about you guys? Natasha?”  
“All fine. Natasha and Steve are in civilian clothes so they’re playing it up for the firemen and police. Where’s Kelsey?”  
“Down the street at a grocery store. She called 911. Niko was trying to go after her which is why I’m here.”  
Niko gave us both a short, haughty laugh. “You think I was going after her? Why? We already had you here. Right where we needed you.”  
“We?” Tony repeated.   
Before Niko could gloat anymore, there was an arc of lightning from above us. It struck Tony’s suit, incapacitating him and frying the suit’s internal power. From Tony’s arms came other small arcs of electricity that jumped to me. My muscles seized and I fell to the floor just as Tony did.   
“Tony?” I called out, trying to catch my breath and move my arms or legs. “Tony? Are you okay?”  
There was no response from him, but Niko was talking to someone else. I couldn’t hear them or see them very clearly over the Ironman suit so they weren’t my immediate concern. My muscles seemed to tense up on their own, but I forced them to move. Once I could touch Tony’s suit, I shut my eyes and tried to connect to Jarvis. It was weak, but I could just feel him buried deep like he was sleeping.   
Jarvis?  
Miss Roen, are you alright?  
Fine for now, can the suit fly?  
Not far. Mr. Stark is unconscious and many systems are down.   
Well then I’ll just have to jump start it then.   
Miss Roen, you must get yourself to safety!  
Tell Tony when he wakes up that Niko still has my phone. I showed you how to track it before, just do it again. They have someone else, a guy named Gerard. Don’t let them come find me until they know what power he has, got it?  
Miss Roen-  
Promise me Jarvis!   
I pushed all the fritzing power and residual energy from the electric shock into the boosters and sent him out, hoping Steve and Natasha found him and that the paramedics would save him before his heart stopped or gave out. It was all I could do now.


	16. Held Captive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter does have some depictions of torture. Not bloody or gore-y, but there is electricity involved, not terribly graphic but it is there so I wanted to give a heads up.

 

The next time I opened my eyes, I had no idea how much time had passed.  _ Where  _ I woke up seemed a much more pressing question right now though. Around me, the room was lit by a glaring overhead light that looked a lot like that creepy hospital room from a scary movie I’d seen years ago. I was lying on a bed with straps across my torso and legs, not uncomfortably tight but just enough to tell me that I wasn’t going to get far by struggling. There was equipment all around me, some hooked up to my bed, others with tubes running across me and in my arms, some of them standing alone. I lifted my head to look around when I noticed I wasn’t alone. 

“You’re up.” A girl who just looked more like an NPC in a video game than any real person should have stepped closer to me and gently pushed my head back down. Her eyes seemed small and vacant, her face clear of any emotion and any real thought. She was broken in a way that I’d never seen before.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Don’t worry. Doctor Hastings will be here soon enough.”

The heart monitor I hadn’t noticed before spiked slightly along with my anger. “Let me go, I don’t know what he’ll do to me. He’ll hurt me, he’s already hurt me, get me out of here, please!” 

She shook her head but her expression didn’t change. “Don’t worry. Doctor Hastings will be here soon enough.”

I wasn’t going to get anywhere else with her. “Well bring him in then, bring Niko, bring the other guy, let’s have a goddamn party in here. I’m a goddamn captive audience.”

“Humor in the face of fear. Admirable.” I would have recognized that voice anywhere. 

The blood in my veins burned as I turned to glare Hastings down as he sauntered over to me.  “I’d offer to shake your hand, but I’m a bit tied up at the moment.”

“Oh no, I think we’re past those formalities, don’t you, Roen? Or is it a different name this time too?”

I scoffed. “What, did we hurt your feelings? Your ego? I know that must be a fragile thing in a man like you.”

“I wouldn’t be so snarky if I were the one stuck in a basement hooked up to a bunch of machines,” he said, standing over me like he’d won. 

I didn’t respond to that, but we both heard the heart monitor to the side of me pick up it’s pace just a little. He seemed to enjoy that. The woman from before had disappeared at some point while I’d been distracted by Hastings and now returned with a set of jumper cables and a piece of metal. 

“We’re not back in New York are we?” I asked, trying to stall whatever was coming. I was pretty sure Hastings wasn’t about to torture me because all the information that I had was stuff that he already knew, but I wasn’t super eager to figure out what was coming instead of that.

“Right under your team’s nose? No, no we aren’t.” He took the items from the woman and set them out of sight. “I don’t just have one hospital you know. You’re not the only one with a myriad of names in your back pocket.”

Hastings had been just one name that made up H.Y.D.R.A. and we thought that once we’d found him, that meant all the names were real. We hadn’t considered that they were all aliases for just one person. He had been the doctor in Arizona.

“You son of a--” I couldn’t finish my insult as he shoved the piece of metal sideways in my mouth, locking it behind my back teeth like a bit on a horse. 

“There. Now I can talk without being interrupted. Niko said you weren’t much for listening before so maybe you’ll listen now that you have no other choice. Her power is quite extraordinary as I'm sure you noticed. It appears as though it manipulates others, their eyes or the air around her, right? Well really her ability started out quite simple. She could only make certain things change their appearance. She could change colors and make up her own. But then I found her and showed her what her powers could really do. The ones _ I _ gave her. You see by running some tests and combining years of research, we realized she wasn’t really changing the colors, she was changing light waves that reflected back to people’s eyes. With a lot of concentration, she can absorb the light that hits her and pass on the light from behind her. It’s all rather technical really, we’ll have plenty of time to talk about it once Niko returns.”

While he spoke, Hastings was moving in and out of sight messing with something past my head. The NPC woman disappeared again and it was down to just the two of us. I was really staring to wonder how I was supposed to get out of all of this. 

“I suppose you’re wondering what this is for?” He asked as I flinched when he touched the two jumper cables together, making them spark over my head. “You see all of the G.E.F.s I created were altered, but not in the same way. In the beginning, that includes you, Gerard, and dear Niko, I wasn’t exactly sure what genes to alter. After dealing with them however, I knew exactly what to look for in your powers. You use things with electricity don’t you? Gerard works in a similar way, though he amplifies the electrical impulses in his own body to create his own electricity. Isn’t that wonderful?”

I struggled against the straps that held me down, desperate to get them loose enough just to move my arms, even just to get one hand free. 

“Ah right, you can’t talk. Well then, I’ll just continue. With his power, we found that amplifying the electricity in his body gave him more control. Let’s see if it does the same to you.”

As much as I struggled, it was no use. The jumper cables clamped onto the metal in my mouth and before long, I lost consciousness again.

  
  


 

That happened again and again until I couldn’t remember what day it was and how long I had been here. Just a few days? A week? A month? Longer? All I knew right now was the soreness in my muscles any time I attempted to move, the face of the NPC woman who went to get Hastings any time I woke up, and the repeating process of him trying to make me manipulate more and more massive machinery from inside the room before shocking me again. The most recent time before I passed out, he said I would have to try turning on the power to the entire building in one shot. Once I did that, he’d let me rest. I wanted to believe that, my body ached for the pain to stop and my heart felt like it would stop altogether if I had to go through that one more time. 

But I knew that if I kept doing exactly what he wanted from me, eventually he’d get what he wanted and I’d be useless to him. I had to hold out, but my body wouldn’t be able to do that forever. When I finally opened my eyes, knowing the woman would go get Hastings, I had a fraction of an idea to go off of and only the hope that someone would see it. I knew my team would be looking for me but with Niko gone, they couldn’t find me through her. 

Hastings burst through the door as he always did, holding the end of an extension cord in one hand and the jumper cables and metal bit in the other. “Ready to try for the big one, there Roen?” 

“How long have I been here?” I croaked, trying to stall while I figured out my plan.

“Oh now let’s see. We’ve done this... 6 times? It’s been about 3 days then. Going on four. Why, have a hot date you’re late for?”

I glared at him. I’m sure he’d found out all about me and Natasha by now, but the fact that he could bring her up made my blood boil. I missed her more than I could say. Her voice telling me to stay strong rang in my head like a mantra every time I had that metal in my mouth. I imagined everything she must have been through to get to where she was now. I wasn’t going to give up without seeing her again. 

“I can’t do it,” I said, trying to make myself sound drained and exhausted which really wasn’t very difficult. “I can’t do anything anymore. I can hardly move.”

“Once you do this, it’s over,” he promised me again. “Give it a try why don’t you.”

He put the extension cord next to my hand and went to set up everything else past my head. I could hear him hooking it up as I tried to focus my energy on getting this to work. I had no way of reaching out to my team, but I had to hope that Natasha would be looking for me, that they wouldn’t stop looking for me no matter how long it took.

I grabbed the cord in my hand and shut my eyes, gritting my teeth against the pain I knew was going to come next. With more of my own power than I had ever used before, I sent energy back through the cord, screaming out in an effort to use everything I had left in me. I felt the impulses in my body shoot out into the rest of the building and for a split second, it was almost like I was a part of every floor, every room. Then, like air being sucked out into space from an airlock, everything returned back to me. The cord had been yanked sharply from my hand and the machines in the room around us had all shut down. I was dazed and disoriented, my mind and eyes searching for sunlight that I knew I wouldn’t find down here. 

Hastings was shouting and I couldn’t see past the spots in my vision, but I clung on to consciousness like it was my life preserver. I might have been going crazy now, but I could have sworn I heard something upstairs that sounded a lot like my calvary coming through the front door. I could only hope that this was really them, not my mind trying to give me a reason to stay awake. 

“How did they know?” Hastings was asking. I didn’t know if anyone else had entered the room to if his question was supposed to be directed to me, maybe even to himself. “How did you tell them where you are? Your powers can’t do that!” 

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” I said hoarsely. I was sure now that I could hear the Ironman suit above us now. “Or about my team.”

“Tell me what you did!” Hastings was suddenly staring over me and my anger flared.

“We beat you! My team found me and we beat you! You won’t ever do this to anyone else again!”

Hastings looked as livid as I felt. “Well then they will have come in vain! There may be a Roen left when they make it here, but not the one they know.”

I struggled against my restraints, but as he’d done before the metal found it’s way locked in my mouth. There was no way that I was going to get this close just to give up now, I knew that I was going to make it through this, all I needed to do was get through this shock.

The jumper cables connected to the metal and electricity arced through my body, making my muscles seize up. It felt stronger this time, so much stronger. I felt like my brain would short circuit and smoke was going to start streaming out of my ears. Then I heard my name, or at least what I think was my name, being shouted. I pushed back against the electricity in my veins, pushed it out and far away, shorting out the source of the current and it was over. 

Hastings was gone, maybe passed out from the back lash, maybe he’d clamped the cables on and left, I didn’t know what right now. The important thing was that I could hear my name and be sure that’s what it was now. I wanted to scream out to them too, call Natasha’s name or tell them that I was here, that I was alive and I never gave up hope and trust in them. I spit out the metal rod but my voice couldn’t do it, I could barely regulate my breathing and force my hands out of fists, but I wanted to call out to her. All I could manage was hoarse rasping, but they were getting closer.  

The door handle rattled and I felt my heart flutter. They were there, right outside, they were here. Then there was a noise off in another room, somewhere down the hall. A scream from a girl who sounded a lot like me echoed through the basement and the rattling at the door stopped.

“Roen!” I heard Steve’s voice just outside the door, then footsteps race away from me.

“Wait!” I croaked, barely able to hear my own voice. “Wait! Come back!” 

I had nothing to tell them where I was, there was nothing for me to touch other than the bed I was strapped to and the machines stuck to me that had shut down in my energy backlash. I tried to summon enough energy to at least turn on the heart monitor, but I couldn’t manage it. Down the hall, I heard Steve shouting, probably fighting whoever it had been that screamed. More people came running through the hall, passing my room to help Steve. I tried again, using what strength I had left and finally powered up the heart monitor. Hearing it’s monotone beeping, I hoped it would be enough. The monitor spiked with my heart when a disk lodged itself halfway through the wall.

“Hey!” I rasped, hoping that this time they would hear me.

“Roen?” Natasha’s voice called out to me. It was the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard.

“Here... Nat...” I said before the wall was shot through by Tony. 

The four of them poured in to the room, Natasha getting to me first. “Roen! Roen, you’re okay, you’re okay!” 

“I... I knew... you’d--”

She shushed me while everyone helped untangle and free me. “Don’t worry about it now. We have you. I have you, I’m here.” Natasha kissed me lightly, careful not to hurt me. 

When she helped me up into a sitting position, I saw Hastings stir in the corner I’d knocked him into. His eyes snapped open and he scrambled to his feet as everyone else turned to train their weapons on him. He froze like a deer in headlights which gave me some satisfaction, but not enough to mask the fact that I felt sick just looking at him. The anger in Natasha’s eyes was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. She drew her gun so quickly I almost didn’t have the time to stop her from firing. 

I grabbed her wrist as she moved forward, tumbling off the bed into her before she caught me and helped me sort of stand against her. “Wait,” I breathed.

“Roen,” her voice was dripping with hate towards him, “after everything he’s done--”

“More of us.” I rasped. My voice was fading and fast, I could only say words at a time and trying to get my point across that way was difficult. “We need him.”

“She’s right Nat,” Clint said gently, an arrow still trained on Hastings. “We need him to help us find everyone else. And to understand what else is going on here. Get her out of here.”

Tony shrugged a little. “Maybe we could rough him up a little first.”

I kept my eyes trained on hers, begging her to keep looking at me like I was clinging to her. If either of us looked at him, we'd be lost to our own feelings, me to the weakness I felt in my body and Natasha to the anger filling hers. I wished I could feel anger but right now I only had the energy in me to feel one or two things at a time and it was pretty evenly split between relief at my team finding me and fear at the fact that I was still in a room with the man responsible for this all. "Be here with me."

 

“I’m not letting you go again,” she promised. 

I wanted to say something smooth back, drop some line about never giving her the chance or something, but I didn't think with my voice the way it was that it would come out the way I wanted. And besides, this close to her, I could see the different colors in her eyes, the soft slope of her features, and feel her heart beating against me and I knew I wouldn't find the right words to describe how I felt right now. Nothing would do her justice and nothing would fully convey the overwhelming happiness I felt being with her again. My knight in black leather armor. She still had me starstruck. I tried to stand but my legs were completely useless in holding me up so instead of leading me out of here on my own two feet, Natasha scooped me up.  The small flutter in my stomach from her touch was a welcome sensation.  

Tony and Steve grabbed Hastings--not gently I might add--while Clint lead our way back upstairs. He took out anyone left that tried to stand in our way. The sunlight as we left the building felt better than sunlight ever had before. It invigorated my body and mind and now, surrounded by my team and clinging to Natasha, I could finally let myself give in to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second to last chapter! Thanks for reading this far!


	17. Coming Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You've made it to the last chapter thank you so much for reading this fic!

The next hospital I woke up in was filled with flowers and sunshine. It was a welcome surprise from the basement I’d been seeing for the past few days. I gently flexed my muscles, glad I could do it with ease now that they weren’t so tight anymore. When I twitched my hand, I found that someone else’s was settled there. My head felt heavy, but I could lift it now and see that Natasha was lying against my bed, her hands weaved around mine. I smiled and laid my head back down, still looking at her like she was the only thing I needed. That wasn’t too far from the truth.

The only thing that disturbed our moment was the steady beep of my heart monitor. I hated the noise because every time I’d woken up before it was there. Taunting me. A constant reminder that I was stuck and alone. I tore it off of me, letting the line go flat. Before I could move to wake Natasha, Clint walked into the room with half a muffin in his mouth. He grinned seeing I was awake. 

“She lives!” he hugged me lightly as I sat up, waking Natasha. “We’re happy to see you up! I’ll go get Steve and Tony!” 

He hurried out the room, leaving a pile of food on the bedside table that made me realize just how hungry I was. Natasha pulled the table closer so I could grab something to eat. “I-- I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for you.”

I shook my head lightly, worried that much harder might make me sick. “Natasha, it wasn’t your fault, I promise.”

She looked at our hands clasped together rather than my eyes. “I left you and Kelsey, I ran out into that fight and left you two alone. I didn’t run to save you from Niko, I let Tony go instead.”

“Why are you blaming yourself?” I asked, squeezing her hand. 

“Because you got hurt. And I can’t kill the man who did it to you.”

In her voice I heard so many emotions I wasn’t sure when one to focus on. Guilt, fear, anger, regret, all of it broke my heart into pieces. I never ever wanted Natasha to hurt like that ever again.

“Natasha, I--”

“You’re awake!” Tony said as he, Clint and Steve burst into my room. “Though the heart monitor says otherwise.”

“Someone want to turn that off for me?” I asked, clinging to Natasha’s hand while she used the other to wipe her face with the edge of her sleeve. I wasn’t about to let go until she knew that there wasn’t a since piece of me that blamed her for this. Tony did as I asked gladly. 

“We were so worried about you.” Steve said, sinking into a chair opposite Natasha. “Are you doing okay?”

I nodded. “I mean, as good as I guess can be expected. I think it will be a bit before I can hear a heart monitor and not want to throw up, but that shouldn’t be too big of a problem day to day. Does anyone know what I’m allowed out of here?”

“Nurse told us yesterday once you woke up they’d need to do a few tests then you can leave.”

“Yesterday?”

“You’ve been asleep... almost 23 hours now.” Clint said with a peek at his watch.

“Oh man, my mother must be worried sick!”

Steve picked up a card from one of the vases of flowers. “Actually, we told them you had come down with the flu and they sent flowers. Said you’d be out of it for a few days and didn’t want any visitors.”

“Wow, you guys thought of everything.” 

“Even got your phone back,” Tony said taking it out of his pocket and handing it back to me. “I promise, I resisted going through it.”

I took it gladly, feeling it’s familiar electric vibration in my palm. “And... and everyone else?”

“Lana contacted us. Niko went looking for her next and luckily she knew to be ready to hide. We have Niko now, along with Gerard and Hastings locked up.” Steve promised me.

“The others? Like me?”

“They won’t even know he’s still alive. We’ve wiped the traces of their existence. I’m sure it would have been faster with you on board, but Jarvis figured it all out,” Tony said reassuringly. 

“Thomas woke up too, by the way. He’s safe and healthy and he promised he’d keep in touch if you called him,” Clint added. 

I smiled. “Oh I’m so glad he’s okay. I’ll call him as soon as I can.”

“We did explain it may be a little bit since you’d gone through hell,” Steve explained. “He said he understood well enough.”

“I’m going to go get that nurse so we can get you the hell out of here.” Clint said, slipping back they way they’d come. 

“I missed you so much. I never gave up on you guys.”

“We never would have stopped looking for you.” Natasha promised me. “Any of us.”

I smiled, hoping she did the same back. I got a little twitch from her lips and decided I was going to have to work through those layers of emotions to get a real one out of her. “I never doubted it.”

“You’re a part of the team now, kid.” Tony beamed. “We’ve always needed a hacker. Saved the best spot for last I guess.”

“Thank you all for coming to get me. I’m sure S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t too happy with using everyone just to get me.”

“We didn’t exactly ask,” Natasha said.

“I never bet against Natasha,” Steve told me, “but I’m even less likely to now that I’ve seen what she’ll do to get you back.”

I felt myself blush and put my other hand over the one that was already intertwined with hers. “Thank you, Natasha.”

“Of course.” She brushed some of my hair behind my ear, still harboring pain in her eyes. “I only wish we’d gotten there sooner.”

“How did you get that big spike of energy through the building?” Clint asked as he returned. “Nurse is coming in a minute by the way.”

“I think he was trying to get me to power the building. He was saying he got that guy that attacked me and Tony--Gerard--to amp up his powers by shocking him like he did to me. Apparently our powers come from the same basic biological electrical impulses so he figured he could jump start mine like a car.”

Natasha’s hand subconsciously clamped a little harder around mine like she was trying desperately not to jump up from her spot to go kill Hastings right now. “If you didn’t have your powers, you might not have made it.”

“But I do, so I did. And now I’m here and you can stop blaming yourself,” I reprimanded her. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else to save me over you four.”

The nurse came in, looking disapprovingly at me for having taken my heart monitor off, and ushered everyone else from the room. Natasha looked like she wanted to stay--and she would have been hard to move once she made up her mind--but I assured her I was going to be alright on my own. 

Once I’d been given a clean bill of health, medicine for my heart which they told me was damaged from the electricity but seemed to be healing at a fascinating rate, and the instruction not to do any intense cardio or exercise for a few months, I was released. Natasha had left me a bag of clothes to change into and I knew I was smiling like an idiot at being given a shirt, pair of jeans, and hoodie straight from her closet. They smelled just like her too. 

I met my team in the hall just outside my room, getting a hug from Tony Clint and Steve along with more well wishes and showing off both of the flower arrangements my parents had sent me. I was going to have to get in touch with them soon about all this now that it was over, but that was not a priority for me right now. 

Natasha was leaning against the wall, watching me still with sad eyes. I planted myself in front of her, my hands grabbing the front of her leather jacket. “Hey, I’m here. I’m alright.”

“I know you are,” she said, brushing hair behind my ear. Her eyes wandered to the three men behind us like she knew I was hesitant to show much PDA in front of them. 

I was, but I was more interested in showing her that I didn’t harbor any bad feelings towards her. I caught up her lips with mine, putting one hand against her cheek and the other pulling her by her jacket closer to me. Both of her hands wrapped around to my back, erasing the space between us. And it was perfect. 

Until Tony ruined our moment. “Ladies, you two can makeout in the car, I can’t stand eating any more hospital food,” he complained. 

I smiled once I’d pulled away from Natasha and found her smiling back at me. “Do you believe me now that I don’t blame you for any of this?”

Her smile turned into more of a smirk. “I might need a bit more convincing.”

Clint stuck his face right next to ours, eyes flicking quickly between our two faces. “Ladies, we should be getting a move on. Still lots to do back in New York.”

I took a few steps back, pulling Natasha away from the wall with me. “Road trip or flying?” I asked, looking at Tony.

“Why is transportation always up to me?” He looked exaggeratedly offended and I guess we’d be flying.

“The rest of us weren’t born into money,” Clint offered. 

“Because I don’t think my accounts and money from before any of you were born will work well right now,” Steve added.

“Some of us haven’t been to work in a few months,” I finished.

“Alright, alright, plane tickets are on me, but I’m not getting you all into first class.”

Natasha squeezed my hand lightly. “We can live with that I think. But if you give me an aisle seat, I will probably have to shoot you.”

  
  


We made it back to New York in one piece. I had never missed the New York skyline more than when I could finally see it coming into view through the plane windows. New York was crowded and busy and people were rude but it had been my home for years now and I hadn’t realized the roots I had put down here. 

“Tony... did your lawyers ever figure out what to do with my apartment?” I asked, dreading the answer wouldn’t be what I wanted to hear. 

He looked a little uncomfortable which made my heart sink farther. “That’s a bit difficult to explain. I can explain more once we get to the tower.”

“Back to the tower?” 

“Well I’m not going to kick you out on the street, kid.” I smiled a little. These four had been amazing to me when I needed them most and I was so lucky to have them all in my life. 

The drive to the tower was mostly quiet, I figured that was due to how tired we all were. Personally, I was happy to just sit in their midst, especially feeling Natasha’s hand in mine or her arm around my shoulder or any casual touch between us. I missed having her this close to me more than I had even realized. The city didn’t seem to have stopped while we were gone; it chugged along at it’s fast yet stalled pace, rushing to the next block of bumper to bumper traffic. It was amazing that outside of me, nothing else seemed to change. I wonder if Thomas felt that too when he woke up.

The biggest surprise of the day was still waiting for me in Stark Tower. We rode the elevator up to our normal floor and as soon as the door slid open, I was met with a banner that read “Welcome Home Roen”. Natasha they let me step out of the elevator first, at a loss for words. 

“Well I did say I’d explain what we found out about that apartment,” Tony said. “Well, the landlord really didn’t want to give it up so we were ready for a fight for your apartment back. We know your privacy is important and roommates weren’t really an option for you. But then Pepper had this idea-- well I had the main idea then Pepper added onto it-- uh how would you like to officially join the team?”

I looked around at everyone’s faces, seeing that they were serious, they genuinely wanted me to join them. Permanently. “That... that would be amazing. Are you serious? Really?”

Clint nodded. “We did say we always needed a hacker on the team.”

“And you make this team so much stronger.” Steve added.

Natasha squeezed my hand. “And this way, you can come with us.”

“Go with you?”

“This is where our idea comes into play,” Tony said bringing the conversation back. “We have been building a new center for the Avengers team. It’s going to be a big thing, lots of training grounds, fancy cars and helicopters and everything you could ever need. Including rooms.”

“Rooms...” I repeated softly.

“If you want one, it’s waiting for you.”

“Really?” I could feel my emotions swelling in my heart, about to burst out as tears in my eyes. 

“Well, not right this second, they are still being built but for now you are more than welcome to stay here.”

I jumped across the gap between us and threw my arms around Tony’s neck. I couldn’t find the right words to say just how thankful I was or how much this meant to a girl who felt like she didn’t have a true place in this world. 

“You’re welcome, kid,” He said softly, patting my back awkwardly in a hug. “I’m guessing that was a yes?”

I pulled away quickly, wiping my eyes and nodding. “Absolutely!” 

Steve and Clint hugged me too, giving me congratulations and welcoming me to their team. Turning finally to Natasha, I wrapped my arms around her waist, unable to stop smiling. She kissed me quickly, putting her arms loosely around my waist as well. 

“So you get to stay,” she said with a hint of a smile. “How’s that for a get well gift?”

“Perfect,” I answered, kissing her again. I couldn’t wait to do that more now. “I’ve never been happier.”

Clint put his arms around the two of us, grinning. “Laura is going to be so happy to meet you. I assume Nat told you you’re coming with us when I go home?”

I smiled. “I can’t wait to meet everyone.”

Natasha shrugged Clint off of her and pulled me in closer, hugging me like she was trying to remember the way our bodies fit together. I tried to do the same. “Roen...”

“Yeah?”

“I think I love you.”

I smiled, turning my head up to her. “Well that’s good because I love you too.”

While the world did not stop spinning like you hear about in books, it did something better. It kept turning. Allowing our moment of confession to bleed into the next moment of kisses and knowing that what we felt was reciprocated by someone whose love meant the world to us. The world didn’t need to stop, we were ready to move forward. This time, together. This was a homecoming in more ways than I had initially thought.


End file.
